EMMA HOUGHTON
Level Designer
RECOLLECT
A Narrative Driven Walking Sim, inspired by Life is Strange and Stranger Things.
​
Team/ Roles: Solo Project
​
Recollect is a narrative-driven walking simulator with a text-adventure twist, developed as my honours project at Abertay University. Inspired by the supernatural mysteries of shows such as Stranger Things, along with the unique storytelling methods of games such as Firewatch and Gone Home, the game sees players embody Sam, a teenager, as she becomes entangled in a decades-old mystery regarding the disappearance of a prior student at her high school. Players explore the high school environment, unravelling two narratives simultaneously – the primary linearly through dialogue interaction with Kim - the missing student, the secondary non linearly through environmental exploration.
​
With shades of Y2K and The Chinese Room argument, the game aims to subvert player expectations through atmosphere and the synthesis of disparate interaction systems; text-adventure and 3D first person exploration. The game aims to develop character relationships solely through the use text-based dialogue; the player interacting with a non-player-character entirely through an outdated computer system within the game world.
​
Engine: Unreal Engine 4
​
Platform(s): PC
​
DEVELOPMENT
At the beginning of this project, I curated a slide to convey my idea - a slide that I could present to quickly pitch my project to others.
Initially, I sketched out a rough layout of the school, inspired by my own high school experience in Scotland, I was inspired by the idea of having an outdoor courtyard as my own high school had one that the building revolved around. This was the center of my idea, I then built around the courtyard, adding more classrooms and then eventually creating the critical path that the player would move through to access key moments of gameplay such as picking up notes, triggering animated events and interacting with the computer.
I blocked out the initial hallway scene with the lockers, staircase and windows. I was inspired by my high school which was built in around 1835, but as my high school was rather unique due to its age, I thought it was best to give the environment more of an American high school aesthetic in an attempt to evoke nostalgia in a wider audience.
Creating a greybox of a small scene helped me set the metrics for the rest of the level, whilst also allowing me to design what modular pieces were needed for the creation of the entire school. Due to time constraints I cut off the back half of the school and blocked the staircase leading to the second floor allowing me to focus my attention to a smaller area of the school.
