Escape The Lab

A collab project where I was the lead game designer.

Unreal Engine - Jira - 6 weeks of development

To get in contact click here:

United Kingdom

Will you Escape?

"You do the nerd stuff, I shoot!"

After a fatal accident during an experiment that was supposed to revolutionize the world, everyone in the laboratory died or turned in into a monster.

Team up with a friend in this asynchronous puzzle-platform-shooter to save yourself. Communication will be a key factor!

The Pitch about my idea

The idea was: What if It Takes Two & Call of Duty: Zombies had a baby? This was the idea, a puzzle-platform-shooter where the 2 players would have a distinct identity. A target that in the end, I think we reached, surely many things did not make it to the final cut, but overall the team did an amazing job.

Ghosts Game PITCH.pptx

The Brain & the Muscle

Olivia - A Cold-blooded protector with a gold heart.

A security guard of the facility, she will be the extrovert force that will literally shoot in the face (electrocuted or set on fire) everything that moves, she is quite fragile though, enemies will target her as she explores the laboratory and collects new weapons along the way. Her physical body will make her less movable than Leonardo, she will have to be more careful and open to cooperating if she wants the leave the facility alive.

Leonardo - A splendid soul stuck in another dimension.
On the other hand, he was the lead scientist behind the project. While Oliva luckily saved herself, Leonardo was the closest to the accident and turned into a ghost. He will have to use his mind (169 IQ btw) to help the fragile meat bag (Olivia) in leaving alive the facility. Leonardo will have multiple support abilities to help Olivia to kill all the threats and solve the puzzles she will never be able to solve on her own.

3 Areas - 3 Identities

From the beginning, we wanted to give each section of the facility an identity. In the first week we confirmed the visual variation of these rooms so that the art team could have started making specific assets for each one. During the rest of the first half of the development, I finalized the puzzles for these rooms so that the rest of the designers could have started to work on them.

Electric Section

The electric room's main puzzle consists of a series of moving platforms where while the human is jumping through them, the ghost has to manually control their movement from a control room with 3 levers. Communication and timing are extremely important.

For this section, I've worked on the second level. During its development, I applied multiple improvements to it to make the player's experience as good as possible. At the end of my level, the human will unlock the tesla weapon.

Chemical Room

In this section the objective is to input the right code into a machine so that the exit door will open. In order to get the code, the human will have to explore a labyrinth while the ghost will have to guide her and move the walls inside it. Once the human will find one of the 3 code rooms, they will find a cube with an element on it. Once the ghost will know this element, they will be able to take its atomic number from the periodic table and then type it. Once completed this room the human will get the flamethrower.

Biological Room

In the biological room the ghost will have to activate a light emitter and with the usage of some mirrors this beam of light will be directed to a receiver connected to a door; The human will have to burn the boxes on the way.

Personally this is worse puzzle of all, it was anyway the first one we imagined (the diagrams below have mechanics that didn't make it to the final game), sadly compared with the other puzzles, the cooperation between the 2 players is almost none, and the mirror has been made so it can have only 2 positions (don't look at me for this lol). If there was something I would like to rework in this game would likely be this puzzle, the designer working in this room did anyway his best with the tools he received.

Managing Jira

Compared with the last year where I was a junior, this time I had to assign task to the other juniors. I am still relatively new to this software, but for once being the one having to manage other designers was for sure a very useful experience. Definitively there is still a lot I can improve about my usage of it

My Main Task: Talking

This was my first time working as a Lead Senior Designer, and something that I was not expecting was related to my productivity. I was expecting to be able to work on the first line by making many design diagrams, meshing the level, playtesting, etc. But in reality most of the time I was on a call with a team member to discuss anything related to the game: Models, Bugs, Puzzles, opinions, quality life improvements, pizza receipts, etc.

Despite there were many things I could have been better at, I think that at least from a communication standpoint I was in a decent position. I was always open to talk about everything in a friendly and respectful manner. Something that not only as a worker but especially as a person, makes me proud of all the people I've grown up with.

Weapons

Starting only with the bare hands, the human will gradually unlock new weapons. Initially both the Flamethrower and the Tesla Weapon were supposed to interact with the environment, but after further development we had to cut the energy transmission of the 2dn one (Still gave us plenty of ideas in case of a sequel!).

The Facility Design

One of the main reasons I chose a secret laboratory underground was to benefit the art & design team: the art team could have focused only on the internal props of the facility without having to worry about the external environmental assets like trees and rocks. On the other hand, the design team could have used all the space they wanted because there were no limits to how wide or vertical their rooms could have been, giving extra freedom in their creative vision for the level design.

In the same way, I learned how to create wide worlds while working on "Light Finder" & "Checkmate", in this project I had to assign multiple people to different sections of the laboratory; During the second week of development I made the main hub section that connects all the other rooms together, It was made so that others could have easily attached their rooms without issues.

Player Affordance

Something that kept in mind during the development was as always the player's affordance. During the feedbacks of the week 3, people were a bit confused about their objective. So for example I have added these 3 basic actors (Alarm light, energy cable, and the display) that change from red to green when a specific task is completed. I've also made an outline material that will help players see what they can interact with.