Bao An

GAME INTRODUCTION:

IMAGINE yourself starting fresh as a Bao An during Finals Week at NYU Shanghai in 2025. You work inside the monitor room and your only job is to check the security cameras. Everything seems normal—until the cameras begin to change.

Bao An is a 3D, narrative, single-player horror game. The player takes on the role of a newly hired night-shift security guard whose job is simple: sit in the monitoring room and keep an eye on the campus through multiple security cameras. But as the night continues, the camera feeds start to show things that shouldn’t be there...

The core gameplay is straightforward:

• Spot and report anything abnormal
  
  

• Correct reports keep the system stable
  
  

• Missed or incorrect reports lower stability
  
  

• When stability reaches zero, the night ends
  
  

The tension builds as the abnormalities grow more complex, and the player must stay alert to make it through the shift.

Bao An blends atmospheric horror with careful observation, turning a normal campus night into a psychological challenge where every detail matters.

Games that inspire us:

Design Highlights:

• We 3D-scanned the actual NYU Shanghai campus using free scanning software.

• The low-quality scan created glitches. These unintentional distortions became a core feature, creating the unsettling, reality-bending atmosphere

• We also use free AI-generated images to create a low-quality twisted effect.

Development moments:

• Daniel worked extensively on the Unity coding and core mechanics, including adding sound, importing the “before and after” footage, conducting multiple rounds of playtesting modifications, implementing the stability bar and its effect logic, and adjusting the win & lose mechanisms.

• Minway collaborated with Daniel on finalizing the game mechanics, seeking feedback from peers and the professor, creating the 3D animated office space for Daniel, and working with Lucy to produce the in-game footage.

• Lucy focused on creating both the “before” and “after” footage for Daniel to import, assisting Minway with video-related tasks, finalizing the game poster.

• Below is our play through video:

Trailer of our game: