Project Info

In Facility Zero you are an agent tasked with repairing the timeline by reaching the final laboratory, each lab represents the same place in different timelines.

Use your abilities to solve the puzzles of each laboratory:

Dimensional Beam: Allows the player to grab and manipulate cubes.
Object Time Rewind: Enables individual cubes to be rewound in time based on their previous movements.

Role - General Game Designer and Programmer

Mechanics/Level/UI Design
Game Structure Planning
Mechanics Programming

Team Size: 1

Time frame: 1 Month

Engine: Unreal Engine 5 (C++ and Blueprints)

Platform: Windows

Gameplay

Learning Objectives

This was my very first project. Special attention was given to Level Design but i also worked on all of these objectives:

1) Design a gameplay experience centered around the core mechanics of just moving cubes and manipulating time to activate pressure plates and solve puzzles. Every element reinforce affordance and player feedback, helping the player understand when an action succeeds or a puzzle state changes.

2) Plan a clear gameplay progression with the correct flow balance between skill and time. So balancing the three main environments City, Polar, and Command Facilities to match player progression: City introduces the first mechanic, Polar introduces time rewind, and Command merges everything into complex challenge that test the player.

3) Build environmental puzzles that rely on logic, timing, and observation.

4) Adopt a mechanic-oriented design philosophy: focus on creating depth through the interaction of a few well-defined mechanics rather than quantity. Develop each stage through Levels of Development (LODs) from prototype to final polish.

Design Workflows

Rapid Prototyping

Hand-drawn sketches of rooms, later translated into unreal engine and In-engine prototypes created to test cube physics and rewind mechanics.

Iterative Testing

Internal playtesting sessions to balance puzzle difficulty and targeted feedback on rewind timing and pressure plate sensitivity.

Visual Iteration

Progressive visual evolution (textures, distortion effects) to illustrate increasing corruption.

Game Programming

As a solo Developer, I've managed to create my own mechanics and logics using Unreal Engine's blueprints and some C++.

I've coded all the gameplay elements, most of them in a fast and reiterative way in order to be able to verify the functionality of each mechanic before expanding it. The main focus was to build every mechanic in a simple and easy to understand way for the player to master.

Visual Effects

Multidimensional World and Rewind Ability

They both use a Post Process Volume material that becomes visible when the respective ability is triggered. They both have a transition state when the ability it is activated or deactivated.

For the Dimensional Beam used to grab objects i used the built-in system in Unreal Engine: the Niagara System

The beam spawns when the player grabs an object using the proper ability, the starting location is the center of the player's body while the end depends on the object current location

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