Head Hunter

I was the level, narrative, audio designer and project manager for this project. This was the first major game project I was involved in.

The starting cutscene of Head Hunter. The cutscene gives the player context of the game, an overview of their main objective, and a visual image of each target so that when they load into the game, they know what to look for.

The ending cutscene of Head Hunter. Short and simple while wrapping everything up neatly.

Narrative Design

The narrative for Head Hunter was given form after the design professor in charge of my group pointed out that laboratories would not be lit up during afterhours, which is why guards would have to carry torchlights and thus the guards' view cones would make sense. This gave me the idea that the player character was an experiment who had escaped from Mirage Corporations and had night vision, allowing him to see clearly in the dark laboratory. This then led to the level's targets being Mirage Corporations' experiments that the player character had to eliminate before they were unleashed upon the world. Doing so allowed the team to save on the time needed to come up with art assets as the artist simply needed to make the player character asset look more robotic and choose three colour schemes, one for each target, and voila the targets had been drawn.

The idea of scattering various pieces of lore around the levels via interactable holograms was voiced out but due to time constraints and the limitations of the engine, it was ultimately scrapped.

Environmental items commonly found in laboratories were intentionally placed around each level to make them look more like laboratories while giving players hiding spots to rest and plan safely.

Sketch for level 1. Since the game does not have a tutorial, I had to incorporate teaching the player the game's mechanics into the first level while giving the player enough of a challenge.

Sketch for level 2.

Sketch for level 3.

Level Design

When designing the levels for Head Hunter, I made sure the levels catered to both the stealth and guns blazing playstyles by focusing mainly on the stealth route since that would require more planning and enemies drop guns when they are eliminated, removing the need for placing guns around the level, with the exception of the silenced pistol.

Level 1

Since the player would spawn with an empty inventory, they would need to quickly find a weapon in a safe space, and the best way to do that would be to put a knife right next to them. This would ensure that the player was extremely likely to investigate the knife before exiting the safe space, giving them a weapon with which they could eliminate the first guard they would encounter right outside the safe space.

Level 2

By forcing the player to use distraction items to get to the target, the difficulty of the level is increased and distraction items become mandatory rather than optional, giving them more of a reason to be in the game.

There is also an increase in the number of guards present but the number of distraction items present in the level is also increased to help players who choose the stealth playstyle. The guard patrolling at the entrance of level 2 is placed far enough such that the player cannot spawn inside the guard's view cone, which was an issue raised during play testing. The silenced pistol is positioned even more out of the way for the player, challenging them to get past all the guards if they want the silenced pistol.

Level 3

When level 3 was first ported over to the editor, the issue of there being too many guards cropped up. View cones kept overlapping and it was almost impossible to clear the level.

I kept some of the overlapping view cones to increase the difficulty of the level but reduced the number of guards to give the player more pockets of space. When placing the guards, I also ensured that eliminating some of the guards would create safe spaces for the player to rest and plan their next move.

The level is symmetrical with the target placed right in the middle to make the level seem more like a prison complex, incorporating some narrative design into the level. Since the target gets increasingly more dangerous with each level progressed, it makes sense for the targets to be under heavier and heavier guard, with the last level's target being completely surrounded by guards.

Audio Design

Since the game is set in a laboratory, most of the sound effects and ambience are machinery sounds, with a few bubble sound effects for environmental items that are liquid in nature.

The background music has a dark tone and is atmospheric, giving the player a sense of foreboding while blending into the ambient sound. This creates tension and suspense, fitting the mood of the game.

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