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Purgatory - Can't Escape!
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Description :
Purgatory- Can't Escape is a short first person psychological thriller walking simulator which involves you to find the truth behind your death and the mysterious death of 4 other people. You as a player explore the hospital which slowly deteriorates as you progress through the story. The hospital MC helps you progress through the game so the sound plays a crutial role in player progression.
Brief :
The game was made for a university project. For this project, we had to make a walking simulator game with the constrain of having 3 distinct moments. We also had a time period of 1 month to make the game with the collective collaboration of game designers and 3D artists.
Team :
Our team comprised of three Game designers and three 3D designers as our game was both asset and mechanic heavy. Moreover, we had a tight deadline and proper task delegation between game designers and 3D designers was really important.
My role :
Intro room design
Ending hall design
Asset design (Drawer, Bed, Hall table)
Integrated assets provided by 3D artists in the game
Animations(All the animations in the game)
Lighting and Post processing
Project planning and initial stages :
During the planning phase, the constraint of 3 different moments was acknowledged by us by having 3 different stages of corruption for the corridor. I begin helping the team members with planning the structure of the corridor & also planning the intro for the game.
Corridor looping structure planned by us as a team
Intro room prototype designed by me
1st Unity prototype of the corridoor
Good communication & project management was really important to finish this project within 1 month. We did the project management part using Agile methodology with scrum and communication was maintained by holding weekly meetings.
Project management
The game was also really asset heavy and the 3D designers had a lot of workload, so I stepped up and planned on helping them by creating some of the assets
Assets made by me
Feedback & iteration :
The feedback received from the teachers changed the direction of our project. Initially, our setting was based on a mental asylum where the player has 3 stages of corruption and the player's mental health gets worse after completing a certain set of actions.
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According to the feedback, the problem was with the setting of the asylum. We were asked to use a more respectful and nuanced approach to mental health.
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We then changed the theme to the player being trapped in a looping hospital (purgatory) i.e. also the place where the player died.
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After making some of my friends play the game, I realised that some of the clues in the initial room (room made by me) were really hard to understand. I made some changes to my room and made the clues more visible by using point lights and giving the player more detailed clues.
Clues for intro room
Final outcome :
Overall, as a group, we were quite satisfied with the game we produced. Purgatory was a fully working game with elements of polish to it. We also involved our friends and family members to playtest the game which resulted in a finished game with minimal bugs. Everyone’s contribution for the game was equal and each of our team member were successful in completing the work assigned to in time. Purgatory was among the top 8 games for a while among other 300,000 game on itch. The game got over 1700 downloads and more than 6000 views. We also had over 30 youtubers review our game and post a video of them playing it which helped us identify more bugs and fix some of them.
Downloads and views
