Blight Island
Link to Game: Blight Island
Blight Island is a short narrative Horror game. You play as a newly employed lighthouse keeper assistant. Taking inspiration from The Lighthouse (2019) Film me and my friend crafted a little story and I was tasked with developing it into a game. Using the Blueprint programming skills I had developed over the last year I put together a story of two people trying to connect whilst living on a barren island. Designing the Story with the world was a huge focus of mine when planning and developing the game.
Game Playthrough:
Crafting a narrative world
By choosing a game based on an Island the scope is immediately kept at a reasonable level. This is a huge reason I think the game is grounded and the world feels real.
As a designer and one focused in LD (Level Design) iterating on the island was largely the focus. Creating a sense of familiarity of certain areas of the environment was really important. Perhaps the most immediate theme I wanted to get across to the player was the significance of the light. The fact that from almost anywhere on the Island (apart from indoor) you could see the light from the lighthouse was of upmost importance. It helped create the sense that it was always watching you - the island was always watching you - like Sauron’s eye in LOTR.
This meant iteration was something that continued quite late into development as feedback was accrued and analyzed the Island ‘adapted’ and changed to fit the narrative.
Cutting Edge Tech
One of the advantage of using Unreal Engine is the new Technology introduced by Epic. With advancements in animation and a focus on film production I was able to harness this tech for my narrative game.
First off was the use of Metahuman for Unreal Engine. This helped create a fully rigged/clothed/rendered character with only a few sliders. Used cutting edge technology these ‘Metahumans’ are almost real looking 3D models. As a designer more than an artist this basically made the whole game possible.
Secondly was the use of Live Link Facial animation. This allowed us to capture our actors face while he recorded his lines resulting in accurate facial animations. By using Unreals sequencer I lined these up with full body animations to create a convincing dialogue conversation feature in my game.
Using these new technologies is fun and challenging but very rewarding when used in conjunction and makes solo game development potential limitless.
