Unity Icon

Denet.exe

8

4 weeks

Finished

A narrative-driven game bringing back memories from the early days of online gaming and virus-infected operating systems. Inspired by games such as BAROQUE and the newly re-popularized file horror genre, this game features puzzle-based mechanics in order to engage the player with an ever growing realization of the fact that something is amiss.

Main Responsibilities

  • Enemy & AI. Responsible for implementing enemy behavior, including combat and patrol paths, as well as more specialized boss mechanics centralized around a multi-tiered phase system. Enemy behavior can be tweaked in the Unity editor through variables exposed with designer efficiency in mind.
  • Audio. Implemented audio trigger prefabs which enables a designer to create audio zones that are either static or dependent on in-game events, such as combat music persisting until enough enemies have been eliminated.
  • Final Boss Encounter. The final boss of the game features a mix of systems that brings together Canvas alterations, an immunity system that depends on the state of enemies and objects linked to the boss, as well as size scaler used to mimic the visual effect of a beating heart. The entire boss encounter, including it's underlying systems, was packaged as a prefab in order to help designers get a clear view of the hierarchy of editable paramaters.
  • UI & HUD I worked on the UI related to one of Denet's core mechanics, the "In-Game Editor", a trigger based image-flash system used for world building, the player action bar and the password-locked file system.
  • Debug Tools In order to speed up testing, I implemented editor debug tools such as player teleportation and wireframe visuals for enemy aggro radius and range.

Narrative-Driven World State System

The gameplay systems in Denet.exe heavily revolve around event triggers inside the meta game which unlocks narrative progressions - which in turn, does the same for the meta game. In this video, we see how the act of colliding with an object triggers a story beat, which in turn awards the player with a new meta-game tool necessary to progress inside the meta-game.

  • Narrative beats influence the state of the world
  • Narrative state is triggered by player actions
  • Audio-queues that are dependent on the state of the world

Meta Game Editor

Throughout the player's journey inside the meta-game, obstacles of varying nature obstruct the player's path forward. Enter the "In-Game-Game Editor", a core mechanic of Denet.exe which allows the player to edit the world around them in order to progress. In this video, we see how the player uses the editor to traverse a set of obstacles.

  • Let's the player edit objects inside the game inside the game
  • Add collision to objects in the world so that you may find your footing
  • Delete or add objects in the world so that you may pass
  • Increase bounciness of objects so that you may reach a little further