No One | 2022
No one tells the story of an odd girl who is trying to adapt to her new life, develop uneasy habits and feel the burden of monotony within daily life. I worked solo on this project so I had the chance to dive into many areas of the development from storytelling to cinematics and programming. This game was also my application worksample to Futuregames where I continued my studies.
Role: Solo Project
Platform: PC
Genre: Third Person - Thriller
Screenshots:
Cinematic Trailer:
Gameplay:
Lighting & Post Processing:
Narrative
The game follows Bella, who just moved into a different city and is struggling to feel belonging to her new environment. She is burdened by the monotony in her life that exists for the sake of staying here, and she is confused about what that means for her. I was also going through similar sensations while making this game. I was away from my hometown for my university studies and had a very limited social life other than going back and forth between the campus and the dorm. Because I have spent the last year and a half under quarantine, I did not have many friends either. As some time passed by, much like Bella does in the game, I found myself observing and paying attention to people around me more, which gave me an insight in their lives. Perhaps it was the result of desire to socialize in my end that I did not know how to execute out of a depressingly monotone and lonely period in my life. I tried to take this uneasy feeling to a next level in this game, where we play as a very observant person who becomes intrigued to find more about a guy she comes across.
As Bella we try to find more about this person by questioning the people in the subway, which is where she spends most of her time while going back and forth between work and home. I worked on giving this game an unsettling yet intriguing game design which gets more tense as we go along. And towards the end we find ourselves in a nightmarish environment once we reach our goal, which feels like a punishment because Bella is not comfortable with what she does. So, in a sense the game serves as a reflection of Bella's journey through loneliness and the consequences of seeking connection in unconventional and potentially harmful ways.
Development
Tone of Voice
I used the Metahuman Creator to make all the characters in this game and then started implementing them into a world I built by combining and tweaking assets from the Epic Marketplace. The list of assets I used can be found here.
Initially, I focused on establishing the atmosphere of the world and setting the tone of voice for a moody story. Given that the player experiences the story through the eyes of a mentally struggling character, I aimed to depict their personality and mindset through colors. So, I decided to use shades of purple in the lighting and post-processing settings. I thought purple seemed very fitting as it carries a somber undertone, yet also allows room for a range of emotions, contrasting with the bleakness associated with gray tones often used to depict depression in films.
Besides setting the ambient visually, I also composed two soundtracks for the game for both the intro and outro cutscenes of the game on my electric guitar by using Reaper digital audio workstation.
Interactive Systems & Gameplay
As I started re-lighting all the assets I gathered, I really wanted this world to feel alive, so I filled the level with a lot of NPCs, some of which are interactable and needed for the game to progress while some of them are minding their own business. The initial Idea I had was to have a day cycle and add routines to all the NPCs, which would make them interactive on certain days or situations. I thought this feature could lengthen the game time a lot and give the chance for the player to observe and analyze details to discover clues. Sadly, I didn't have enough time to implement this system, but I've still made a multiple choice-based dialogue system with consequences where the player can interact with some characters as well as implementing animations for all the NPCs so they feel like a part of the world. I used blueprints to code all these interactable systems in the game. And yes, the color scheme exists in the blueprints as well (secret easter egg?).
Players can also interact heavily with their phone, in fact the the whole quest system can be accessed from the "notes" app. The phone also features a music player where players can listen to music as they wait in the station and can be used as a flashlight when needed.
The blueprint used to manage NPC interactions in the game
The blueprint used to interact the player character's phone
Conclusion
With this game I had the chance to practice many aspects of storytelling and world building in games, as well as designing and programming multiple interaction systems but most importantly I learned to be inspired by my life and what could seem as ordinary things in life.