Escape - GameJam version
Overview
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This game was my entry for the HEJ - March (One Game a Month Hungary edition). https://itch.io/jam/hej-2024-marcius
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My chosen theme was Freedom with the extra challenge Splitscreen , so the player's task is to escape from the prison, while utilizing physics objects and the CCTV to avoid the guards.
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Splitscreen showed as a useful tool made of extra rendered camera views to help the player to see the guards in the level.
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I developed AI agents, controlling the guards, and I got deeper into Unreal's Behavior Tree and PawnSense systems.
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Project Details
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Designed and developed in less than 1 month
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Created in UE 5.3
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Scripting, Feature Development, Animations, Game & Level Design
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Solo work
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Assets from Epic Marketplace and the web (see sources on the download page)
Matter of 3C (Camera, Character, Controls)
As soon as the themes were announced, the basic idea and gameplay feature came into my mind: escape with a prisoner and use CCTV as an extra sight of the level. This resulted in a FirstPerson view project, as that view reduces the sight of the player around obstacles and corners, so the player is more incentivized to utilize the cameras available.
Although adding much cameras to the level increased the performance needs and decreased the challenge of sneaking, so I had cut down the amount to 2-3 cameras per level.
During playtests it became clear that the limited vision of the player can cause much frustration to detect the guards' position, and I didn't want to change the number of cameras altogether due to performance constraints, so eventually I've added the leaning functionality. This allowed the player to see around corners and edges without getting caught. ​
As I wanted to have different challenges in each level, I've also introduced jumping, running, crouching to the movement palette, enabling a more natural and widespread tactical options. ​
AI
I wanted the prison wardens not to be stationary, so I developed a patrol functionality using splines which were used as a route by the AI. Adding multiple points and variable waiting time at the points resulted in a flexible and controllable enemy presence in the levels. ​
​Still as the levels were small indoor spaces, avoiding the guards were quite difficult for the player, therefore I chose to have a new behavior defined in the AI, namely when they hear a sound, the agent goes there to investigate the source. This gave an additional layer to the gameplay as the player can make noises to move wardens away from their usual spot using different movement modes (jumping, sprinting) and dropping objects.
Boxing Operation
As AI became more receptive to noises, I needed to develop a feature where the player could pickup and drop certain items. Basic interaction was already in place to use camera panels and open doors, but this setup needed a bit more development. Eventually the result was a half solution, player could pick certain actors, but only a UI text was notifying the player which object could be used. In later versions I've added a highlight effect to every interactable item, simplifying the identification.​
​The feature had another issue, ie. the picked up item covered a substantial part of the screen, making the navigation and orientaion of the player even harder. In order to reduce this, I have added a dynamic material to the picked up mesh and setup with reduced opacity. This way the screen became much less obstructed.
Post Mortem
During the one month development period I have learnt a lot about texture renderers, the AI system, Behavior Trees and Animations in UE. I had spent most of my time on making these main features work, so in the end I had little time to create the actual levels. Only 5 got into the game in the end, and each of them can be beaten under 1 minute. Still I believe this game ended up to be a nice puzzle, sneaking game, although many things were missing from the game jam version which got developed later:
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crouching and leaning
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better UI in general
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AI aware of other agents detecting the player
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Guard dogs as a new type of enemy
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Ladder system, throwable objects
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One large level with ~10 minutes of gameplay
I had the opportunity to showcase this game at gaming fairs to the public in Budapest and this game had the most success amongst players.
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