games / experiments / design / blogs / resume / about
Refraction
Genre: Walking Simulation / Horror / Puzzle
Platform: PC Windows / MacOS
Role: Technical Game Designer
Team: Luke Kim, Gabby Gruvman, KC Tovera, Isaac Tian
REFRACTION is a sensory game that utilizes the player's senses by restricting sight and sound. You must direct yourself throughout the space by using camera flashes to see your surroundings and while also flashing nearby stalkers. While exploring, collect five keys to unlock the door and escape.
The game was created to give players an experience where they feel restricted in maneuvering throughout the space through the darkness of the environment and the creeping sounds of someone lurking around.
Genre: Walking Simulation / Horror / Puzzle
Platform: PC Windows / MacOS
Role: Technical Game Designer
Team: Luke Kim, Gabby Gruvman, KC Tovera, Isaac Tian
REFRACTION is a sensory game that utilizes the player's senses by restricting sight and sound. You must direct yourself throughout the space by using camera flashes to see your surroundings and while also flashing nearby stalkers. While exploring, collect five keys to unlock the door and escape.
The game was created to give players an experience where they feel restricted in maneuvering throughout the space through the darkness of the environment and the creeping sounds of someone lurking around.
My contributions were designing the camera flash mechanic, improve and implement the game's shaders, as well as bringing work on optimization and assisting on designing the level.
- Game Design
- Shader Tools
- Programming
- Game Design
- Shader Tools
- Programming
Key Design Goals:
1) You as the play must find all keys in order to escape the school.
2) Players will be in a dark area and can only navigate themselves using the flash of their camera.
3) Flashes should temporarily remove the entities and will have a cooldown.
1) You as the play must find all keys in order to escape the school.
2) Players will be in a dark area and can only navigate themselves using the flash of their camera.
3) Flashes should temporarily remove the entities and will have a cooldown.
Design Goals Explanation:
1) Keys are to be scattered around the environment of the school building, making sure the player navigates to all parts of the environment.
2) The entire environment is dark, limiting the player to their only source of light, which is their polaroid camera's flash.
3) While the flash can be used to temporarily remove entities coming from certain direction, it allows players to quickly maneuver across parts of the map while flashing to see where they are going.
1) Keys are to be scattered around the environment of the school building, making sure the player navigates to all parts of the environment.
2) The entire environment is dark, limiting the player to their only source of light, which is their polaroid camera's flash.
3) While the flash can be used to temporarily remove entities coming from certain direction, it allows players to quickly maneuver across parts of the map while flashing to see where they are going.
Post Mortem
What went well:
Communication: While working on this game, we talked as a team both in person and through Discord.
Our communcation was on point. We listened to each others ideas, we were straight forward with things that
weren’t necessary, and we respected each other as a unified team.
Vision: As a team is is important that the goal or vision of the game matches with all members. When were designing
the MVP for this game, we were already set on the idea of utilyzing darkness and sound as well as having
the player use a camera some way. This ended up leading to players using the camera’s flash.
Playtesting: Playtesting as always went well, discovering many bugs which we ended up having to go back and fix.
We noticed many players trying to spam the camera’s flash as much as they can. Playtests are very important for
the process of making games because it helped us work harder as a team as well respect the work that we
accomplished.
Challenges:
Inventory: Inventory is for sure hard by which we ended up decided to mimic the feel by using numbers. Each key you collect in the game increases a number which then allows players to leave. We ended up working on an inventory at one point, but ultimately spent way too long on it.
Artificial Inteligence: The AI was by far the toughest aspect of our game. We used the AI Navmesh feature in Unity, but we came across a lot of clipping issues, as well as the AI model walking through colliders. We also spent quite a long time debugging and re-animating the AI due to strange body movement.
What went well:
Communication: While working on this game, we talked as a team both in person and through Discord.
Our communcation was on point. We listened to each others ideas, we were straight forward with things that
weren’t necessary, and we respected each other as a unified team.
Vision: As a team is is important that the goal or vision of the game matches with all members. When were designing
the MVP for this game, we were already set on the idea of utilyzing darkness and sound as well as having
the player use a camera some way. This ended up leading to players using the camera’s flash.
Playtesting: Playtesting as always went well, discovering many bugs which we ended up having to go back and fix.
We noticed many players trying to spam the camera’s flash as much as they can. Playtests are very important for
the process of making games because it helped us work harder as a team as well respect the work that we
accomplished.
Challenges:
Inventory: Inventory is for sure hard by which we ended up decided to mimic the feel by using numbers. Each key you collect in the game increases a number which then allows players to leave. We ended up working on an inventory at one point, but ultimately spent way too long on it.
Artificial Inteligence: The AI was by far the toughest aspect of our game. We used the AI Navmesh feature in Unity, but we came across a lot of clipping issues, as well as the AI model walking through colliders. We also spent quite a long time debugging and re-animating the AI due to strange body movement.