About the game
Epistasis is a horror game where you are tasked with exploring an abandoned space station and figuring out what really happened there. Be wary however, as it’s not as empty as it seems…
We worked on the game as a team of 5 people from January 2023 to May 2023, during our final year at Business College Helsinki.
My contributions
Gameplay
- Created the base player interaction system used in large parts of the game (puzzles, pick-ups, etc.)
- Developed and maintained the player controller.
- Implemented most of the game’s audio.
UI
- Developed the dialogue system, responsible for playing fully voiced dialogue and displaying the appropriate subtitles.
- Created an automated options system, which allowed us to efficiently create and implement 20+ player settings.
- Upgraded Overlay UI-only puzzles to immersive diegetic ones.
- Created an immersive “wrist watch”-style UI, including it’s view-state and dynamic display of information, which replaced a majority of the HUD.
- Developed the entire minimap system.
- Replaced the default UI graphics to ones from an asset pack.
- Implemented world-space popups to display the names of interactable objects.
Testing
- Actively participated in planning, setting up and executing on testing sessions.
- Observed testers and analyzed feedback to find the most important issues.
- Imported an in-game developer console.
Workflow
- Set up and maintained the Jira environment used throughout the project.
Publishing
- Edited the trailer.
- Created and wrote the details for the itch.io page.
Optimization
- Optimized heavy assets to fit the game’s build size under itch.io’s limits.
What I learned
I would say that the most valuable thing I learned from this project was on how to collaborate with a team of programmers and what it is like working full-time on a long-term project.
Because the project management was largely up to us, we figured out the Agile workflow and it’s tools as a team, which was a very effective way of learning it’s fundementals and advantages.
On the technical side, I learned more about Unity’s capabilities in 3D, particularly when working with UI, audio and HDRP.