Mirrored Phantoms

Level Summary

I was in charge of designing the third section of Mirrored Phantoms. I specifically designed the part of the mannequin factory that was in charge of detailing and painting the mannequins. Wander through the creepy hallways filled with colored mannequins. Solve puzzles to figure out passcodes to unlock doors all the while being hunted by a horrid monster. Stealthily navigate through the factory to avoid the monster’s detection. Plot your escape out of an infinite hallway full of dread to finally make it back to the hub and continue your quest to piece together the mirror and escape the phantom.

Dev Info:

  • Game: Mirrored Phantoms

  • Genre: Horror, First Person, Light Puzzle

  • Mode: Single Player

  • Team Size: 24

  • Engine: Unreal Engine 5.4

  • Development Time: 200 hours 

Responsibilities:

  • Level Design Document Conception

  • Quest Design and Implementation

  • Balancing

  • World Building

  • Lighting

  • QA

Design Goals:

The goal of this level was to build a tense level where the player has to be mindful of their surroundings while navigating the room as to not attract the monster’s attention. A key theme of my levels is that I wanted to slow the player down and force them to interact in the space and with the monster. This meant I locked some of my doors in the map so that the player has to find the password in a book or solve a puzzle in order to progress. This way they can’t just outrun the monster and instead must play around it. Then finally after building the tension I wanted to create a false sense of safety in the player with the infinite hallway. I wanted to invoke themes of claustrophobia and madness as the player wanders aimlessly through the repeating hallways, forcing them to explore and search the space, which 2 of the previous rooms have taught the player.

  • Encountering the Monster

  • Sneaking Around

  • One of the passcode hints

  • Mannequins Being Painted

  • Each Team Member has a Nametag

  • Solving the Code

  • Infinite Hallway

Post Mortem

What Went Well?

  • Adapting to an unfamiliar genre. I’ve never played a horror game before so I had to learn what made those types of games fun and try to mimic them.

  • Prop layout looks realistic.

  • Space layout allows for stealthily navigating the space well.

  • Communication with Software Development team. I worked closely with that team to get the infinite hallway to work and sort out the bugs which required effective and clear communication.

  • Leading the QA team in systematically and effectively finding and reporting bugs. Plus communicating them to the team members that need to know about the bug.

What Went Wrong?

  • Designing clear release of tension. The level does build tension throughout and keeps the player on nerve, but I think communicating with the team to implement a jump scare would have greatly increased the quality of the level

  • I think scope was a bit out of proportion. I really wanted an infinite hallway to drive the players mad and keep them on edge. I didn’t realize the amount of manpower this took which resulted in implementation happening way later in the dev process than I would’ve liked. This resulted in less testing originally which caused a lot more bugs to occur down the stretch.

What I Learned?

  • How to adapt quickly to an unfamiliar genre. How to quickly take in resources from a variety of games and learn to recreate them in my own style.

  • How to find the fun in a project that isn’t for me. This is not a game genre I would choose to develop. So this taught me how to find joy in working on something that isn’t for me. Just because I don’t like horror doesn’t mean I have to hate the game I’m working on or let it affect my work.

  • How to communicate with software developers in a way to effectively share my vision and goal with them so that they can help the team create my ideas. This was invaluable when creating the infinite hallway and the “Blair Witch” moment later in the level.

  • How to bug report in a more effective manner. For this game I was the Lead QA. I spent over 40 hours playtesting and finding every bug I could. This meant I was always reporting on our communication sites like JIRA bug reports for the team. What helped with this was also learning who on the team was responsible for what. That way if a bug was occurring with the monster, I could report the bug and then reach out to the respective team member in charge of the monster and let them know a bug has been reported. This helped speed up the process while also letting them know they could reach out to me if they had questions about recreating the bug.