Fast Facts

Team Size: 4
Roles: Game Designer, Level Designer, and Gameplay Programmer
Timeframe: 6 weeks
Engine: Unity
Language: C#

Concept and Design Goals

Set in RIT's underground dormitory tunnel system, The Tunnels is a first-person psychological horror walking simulator that has players taking the role of a student being chased by an entity while trying to find their way back to their dorm room after a long day of classes.

Between "chase rooms" where the player is running from their pursuer, they are also tasked with "puzzle rooms" where they must find a key to unlock a door that leads them to the next level.

The "entity" chasing the player is a balloon version of our school mascot, called Balloon Ritchie. We wanted to avoid use of grotesque or violent themes, as we didn't find those elements essential to driving the game's narrative. The keywords we used to describe the target player experience were "paranoid", "eerie", and "unsettling".

Responsibilities

• Designed and implemented levels using audio and visual cues to generate an immersive yet unsettling atmosphere.
• Designed the game's narrative and room system to facilitate pacing and a build-up of tension and anxiety over time.
• Prototyped enemy AI movement behaviour using Unity's navmesh system.
• Programmed player interaction system.
• Created and maintained core documentation.

Pacing and Audio/Visual Cues

The player completes two puzzle rooms before encountering a chase room to balance periods of rest and engagement. Throughout the experience, I kept the player immersed by building tension using audio and visual cues.

I used lighting as a primary visual cue to build tension, in the form of flickering and fused ceiling lights within puzzle rooms. I also used combinations of music and ambient background noise to build tension from the audio front.

In chase rooms, visual and audio cues are significantly different to signal immediate danger. Ceiling lights turn red and there is also graffiti on the walls containing sinister messages. Music features a higher BPM, dissonant chords, and a raid siren to fuel a perception of urgency.

Environmental Narrative

By exploring levels, the player discovers hidden vignettes consisting of small posters. The content of these posters, if put together, provides the game's backstory. This approach was favoured because it was very scope-friendly, given the project's time constraints.

What I Would Improve

Level Design

The player could be guided around rooms better to ease finding exits and keys. Lighting could be leveraged to accomplish this subtly. Additionally, pipes could be placed on walls more deliberately to act as leading lines.

Rooms can be made more claustrophobic by lowering the ceiling, narrowing pathways, and introducing more environmental obstacles to create a more pronounced sensation of anxiety in players.

AI

Refining AI movement behaviours to give the player some time to build distance from the agent at the start of a chase room before being more aggressively hunted as time progresses might produce a more balanced and engaging experience.

Play the Game!

CONTENT WARNING: This game may trigger seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy.

Controls

• WASD: movement
• Space: jump
• Mouse: look around
• Left mouse button: interact with items/pick items up
• Hold LEFT SHIFT while walking to sprint

Installation Instructions

No installation required; this is an online WebGL build! Simply click the button below to be redirected to the game in-browser. Make sure to play the game fullscreen for the best experience!

This build runs best on Chrome and Edge browsers.

This game has sound. Either turn the volume up or down, or mute the browser tab entirely. Your preference!

Link to Build

Link to Repo

Click the button below to get access to the project's repository:

The Tunnels Repo