| Engine | Language | Role | Type | Genre | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unity | C# | Programmer | First Person | Horror | 2012 |
About the game
Shadows is a first person horror game, where the goal is to find the main characters missing brother while avoiding the dangerous monster that can be found inside the cave.
The game starts out in complete darkness, allowing the player vision only when lightning strikes. When lightning strikes, the whole cave gets illuminated. Except for the lightning, the player can use a lighter that grants a little vision. The vision from the lighter alone is not enough to give the player enough vision to be able to complete the level, the lighter in combination with the lightning makes it possible to orientate inside this massive cave.
When the player first enters the game, the only thing in the vicinity is a television with nothing but static, and a teddybear looking towards the television.
As the television is the only thing that emits any sort of light at the start of the game, the player will undoubtedly be drawn towards it. And as the player get closer to the television, he/she will see that the teddybear holding a ligher, which is illuminated by the screen. If the player then approaches the lighter, a prompt will appear which tells the player that the lighter can be picked up by pressing "F"
This screenshot is taken during a lightning strike. Besides the lighter, the only thing that occasionally will light up the cave is the lightning strikes. The lightning strikes are however, random. But, in order to make the game playable to even the most unlucky players, the lightning will strike automatically if it hasn't striked for the past 10 seconds.
What this means is that you can be lucky and get multiple lightning strikes in a row. And if you are unlucky, the game will assist you after 10 seconds with a free lightning strike!
This game was made as an assignment given by the school. And the assignment was to make a completely monochrome game. Hence the darkness, and the lack of colors.
As we decided to make a horror game, we chose to keep the user interface to a minimum. The reason for doing this was because we wanted the player to be as immersed as possible. And if we were to have an interface with healthbars and stamina bars etc., we felt that it would ruin the immersion.
One of the most interesting design choices we made as we created this game, was how the lighter worked. In order to light the lighter you have to hold down the left mouse button as you simultaneously scroll the mouse-wheel.
You might think that that sounds annoying and weird, but the reason we chose to do it like that was in order to try to recreate how a real lighter feels. I'm not talking about the "newer" lighters that light with a simple press of a button, but the old ones where you had to hold down the button to emitt gas and then scroll the "wheel" in order to light it