The Night Climb

2025
PC
Made for the Aurora Game Jam  -  Made in Unity

I made The Night Climb on the theme of 'Echoes of the Polar Night'. It was an attempt to expresss my feelings on heartbreak and letting go, through a game. I designed the level to represente the process of moving on, a process which is about overcoming the fear of loss, and accepting it. I crafted sections of the mountain to represent stages of this process - from the initial confusion and pain, the lonely periods of depression, and the eventual acceptance at the end. The difficulty lay in balancing this symbolic representation of a very personal process, and facilitating progression in a game whose main mechanic is the act of climbing.

To compliment the climbing, I designed the mechanic of finding and burning artifacts - objects from the past which hold memories - in order to increase your stamina so that you can climb higher platforms. I also wrote the dialogue for the characters in the game, each of which is based on real life personal interactions with people during that particular tough time of my life, creating a very autobiographical narrative experience. The writing is more poetic and abstract than literal representation of the game's lore, and I left it for players to interpret the ending in their own way.

You can read a post-mortem of the game here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TjIRzdi3RAYo5TiZU0Nt0PTr8BSN3Md2Z3zh_BKsYIk/edit?usp=sharing

Check the commentary video below for a deep dive into the design process