top of page

Hollow Orbit

In Development.

​​

Survival Horror

 

This project is being made by me as a solo developer in UE5.

​

This project is an Alien: Isolation inspired horror game with a twist: You will never see the monster hunting you. The goal of this project is to create an engaging survival horror experience where the player must traverse the ship to unravel the mystery of what has happened on board. The gameplay is inspired by games such as Resident Evil and Alien: Isolation.

​

You will play as a lone engineer who docks with a science ship in the hopes of refuelling, but you soon come to find that there is no one to be found onboard and there is something else on the ship.​

​

The purpose of this project is to push my AI and level design abilities, as well as to push my ability to make a more ambitious project.

My Contributions

​

Gameplay and Gameloop design

  • Gameloop that involves solving problems using key items and evading an enemy that you will never be able to see.

  • All systems created in Unreal's Blueprint

  • AI System

    • A complex, AI system taking lessons from Alien: Isolation.

    • An AI Director system that tracks all the events of the game, such as story events, points of interest and the player's actions.

    • The director will direct the AI's roaming pattern using a selection of values, such as the time away from the player, near the player and the AI's simulated desire to move to a new location.

    • The player will know when the AI is near using a proximity sensor, but will not know it's exact location.

  • Level design, narrrative and length

    • Level design is an open ship environment with inspirations from Resident Evil, such as paths needing to be unlocked using key items, routes in earlier areas not being accessible to begin with to encourage backtracking and familiarity with the environment.

    • The ship is a modern-futuristic science ship orbiting a strange, almost unnatural moon. This moon was the subject of the science mission and the player will have to uncover it's significance in relation to the events that took place onboard.

    • The narrative is told through the environment an d logs that the player can find. As the story progresses, the environment will react and changes to increase the difficulty or open new routes for the player.

  • UI Design and implementation

    • The UI design is primarily diegetic, such as the indicators and widgets in the player's suit. There as some non-diegetic elements to make sure that gameplay information is easily accessible for the player.

    • UI implementation using Unreal's UMG

  • Endless Bug fixing

    • Using Miro to track bugs, finding reliable ways to recreate and fix bugs 

  • Participant playtests were conducted to identify weak points in the game's design and where elements were not communicated effectively, as well as quality of life improvements.

 
bottom of page