Team Project | Created in 7 days for Scream Jam 2024
Level Designer & Programmer - Unity
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An atmospheric horror game set in a haunted bunker, where the player finds cold spots with a sensor and takes photos of ghosts.
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I primarily worked as the Level Designer and one of the programmers, but also contributed to general game design, UI, audio, and a small amount of 3D assets.
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​Created in 7 days for Scream Jam 2024 on itch.io, this game was ranked #3 best game out of 560 submissions, and was also ranked as the #1 horror game, and was awarded the "gHost's Choice"
Level Design
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For Scream Jam 2023 we created "Off My Lawn!", a wave-based shooter about shooing away trick-or-treating children from your front lawn - a semi-circle area that serves as an arena. Whilst it won #2 Best Game, this year we wanted to test ourselves and flex new muscles by trying to make a true horror experience.​
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To focus in on atmosphere, exploration and an emphasis on environmental narrative, we knew we had to create an interesting level to house the ghost-hunting mechanics we had scoped out. The idea began with a modern suburban house, similar to that seen in Phasmaphobia, but we made the decision to move to a bunker setting, as a house would require a high density of assets, but a bunker could appear visually barebones, yet still convince the player of its reality. The bunker theme became the core of the game and informed every decision moving forward.​​
Early designs of level flow and ghost setpieces that are in the final game. These level designs were created by our designer and artist Bjørn.
One of our team members, Bjørn, had the role of designing the ghosts, setpieces and surrounding narrative, and worked on this while I was implementing early functionality for our game such as player movement and the sensor mechanic. Once he had developed a plan for each ghost and room, I shifted focus towards level design and stitch these ideas together into a full bunker with appropriate structure and pacing considered:
The level map, initially drafted as a sketch, then created on Figma with final measurements and mapping of the setpieces in each room.
The original idea was to have the rooms closely connected, but progress locked - as we fleshed out the Sensor mechanic, we realised more space would be needed to pace out the game and enhance the "ghost hunting" experience. I wanted the level to feel asymmetrical, and have the structure of the layout separated into two areas: The top level, which has a hub area with a long cyclical corridor that connect multiple rooms, and the lower level, resembling a silo and connecting the rooms in a more conventional method. One of the more unsettling rooms, the bathroom, is accessed via the stairs connecting the two levels. This helped transition the player's experience to a darker tone as they progressed through the game.
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Designing the corridors of the upper level was the most challenging aspect of the level design, as I wanted to create corridors that feel distinct and readable, but also somewhat complex for the small amount of space they had. You can see how complexity (and an additional room) was added for the lower level corridors in the images above.
I created the entire level model in Blender, then split the mesh into separate areas to UV unwrap and texture for the game.
The level fully implemented:
