A Bomb?! In the Toilet???
- Timothy Lance Chua
- Mar 20, 2024
- 3 min read
Heya! This is a behind-the-scenes look at how I and my groupmates made the Unnamed Escape Game.
Initial Phase: Planning and Preparation
This game was originally made for an activity in our subject, Game Design Patterns, but... we may have gotten a little too silly.
At first, we were given a level design blueprint and were asked to create a game from it.
This was the original blueprint. On the left is the layout of the house within the game, as well as a draft of the UI inside the game. On the right is the expected game flow. It indicates how the game should progress.
The game itself seemed to center around a mysterious theme, leading up to a sense of urgency as the players find the bomb and scramble to find a way to defuse it. So, we worked on this theme as the basis of the design and aesthetic of the game.
When we started making the game, we decided that it would be better if we made changes to the layout for the house.
As you can see, we decided to add in a living room and a kitchen to the house and change the location of the bedroom and toilet. We decided on these changes to add more flavor and immersion to the game.
User Interface
The next task we had to tackle was the user interface and the main menu. Remember how I said that our group wanted to focus on the mysterious theme? Well...
Weeee kinda ran out of time. Ehe. Despite the very colorful and bright main menu, we still stuck to the concept within the actual gameplay. Just please don't be mad at us if you experience vertigo from the extreme change in themes.
Lighting and Shaders
Next, came lighting and shaders. We were asked to use URP (Universal Rendering Pipeline) to add in and adjust the shaders within the game. We tested a bunch of effects, including chromatic aberration, color changes, and vignette and ended up with a really good shader.
The game went from looking like this...
To this.
It took time to get the correct mix of shader effects to get this result, but it was all worth it in the end.
Main Phase: Setup and Programming
Next we had to start fixing the colliders, adjust the properties of each object in the game, and start coding. Fixing colliders always takes the most time during the game development process, especially in 3D games like this.
That moment when you multiple-select assets of the same type to add in the same box collider to each and every one, only to realize that some of them are not forward facing by default and its collider is now facing the completely wrong angle. Seriously, its extremely annoying when some of the assets present in your game aren't forward-facing by default. You need to go deep into its child components just to find that base shape of the entire asset and place your collider on it.
It took me around a good 2-3 hours getting all of the colliders ready for gameplay.
Afterwards, I proceeded to programming. It wasn't too hard, aside from the fact that you need to use a bunch of switch statements to properly update the state from the game. By the way this is what the Game Manager ended up looking like.
Yeah, this is pretty normal for a Game Manager.
Ending and Easter Eggs
After fully developing all the gameplay, we decided to put a little something for the ending of the game - depending on whether you defuse the bomb or not.
If the player is unable to defuse the bomb...
Yeah. The world basically ends.
On the contrary, if they do defuse the bomb they get this.
Yeah, its basically base-boosted "Enemy" by Imagine Dragons with a bunch of Genshin gamer memes loaded into it.
I honestly didn't know what we were thinking.
Closing Remarks
I hope you enjoyed this behind-the-scenes look at our game Unnamed Escape Game. If you had any similar experiences, insights, or any comments in general, don't be afraid to comment down below.
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