MOR is a puzzle driven horror game with heavy focus on the narrative. Set in the Swedish archipelago in the 70s, take the role of 17-year old Linn as she returns to the island where she almost drowned as a child. After a fight with her mother, Linn is left alone in the family's old summer home. There she finds an old spirit board, through which she finds herself communicating with Mikael, a strange entity with a secret it desperately wants to share with her.
Genre: First person, Horror, Story, Puzzle
Engine: Unity
Team Size: 12 (solo designer)
Duration: 10 weeks (apr 2019 - june 2019)
Platform: PC
Details
Background
School project
It offers an hour long experience, complete from start to finish. The game was nominated to SGC 2019 and has since release been played by numerous youtubers.
RESPONSIBILTIES
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Conceptualized all design in the game
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Defined basic plot line and the sequence of all events
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Designed the core gameplay experience
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Designed all puzzles
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Reviewed and implemented all scripted systems
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In charge of official playtesting sessions
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Quality assured, balanced and bug reported
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Sketched and blocked out the level
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Designed pacing and various level beats
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Set dressed, populated and landscape sculpted the map
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Applied lightning
Game Design
Core gameplay loop
I wanted to create a cohesive experience that combined puzzles and narrative seamlessly.
I wanted the player to feel like they uncovered the narrative with their own approach.
The gameplay revolves around the player communicating with a spirit through a ouija board.
Ask the ouija board a set of questions based on what you want to learn. The ouija board provides a clue.
Discover something about the narrative that you can base your next questions on.
Solve a puzzle based on the clue.
Immersion Design
One of the design pillars in MOR was immersion, to make the players feel as if they are an organic part of the game world. I wanted the player to feel as if they were Linn (the player avatar); to see things from her perspective.
HUD
Non diegetic elements in the game were stripped away wherever possible. Everything the player knows and sees that differs from the player avatar’s point of view detracts from the immersion.
Consistency
Diagetic mechanics
Right from the main menu, the player is already inside the game. The main menu is a dynamic, living canvas. When the player presses start, the camera starts to move from the protagonist’s point of view and the first person, intro cutscene starts.
The player is equipped with a note book. It's an in-game menu that the player interacts with through the avatar.
It's updated after key events, conversations and important found objects.
Ocular simulation
In a first person game, the camera is suppose to mimic the eyes of the avatar.
In the post processing, I added depth of field, this is simulataing the limitation of the lens in the human eye.
To make first person hands in camera view feel less stiff, I wrote a script that lerped the player’s hands to follow the camera angle with a delay to make them feel heavier.
Sense of body
A dynamic camera bobbing, based on the walking animation, was added to make the camera feel less like it’s rolling on a stable tripod.
Expressing natural body reactions to stress was something that was implemented. Whenever the protagonist encounters stressful events, a dull heartbeat can be heard, or when she enters a cold area, her hand model starts to shiver.
Altered Design
No text pop-ups and very few prompts are presented to the player throughout the game. In MOR, the progression is designed with little to no hand-holding by trusting in the player’s intuition and real world heuristics.
Tutorials
The tutorials are intuitive and lead the player without text in the game. This is how I introduced the player to the physics-based interaction system:
Entrance door is locked and in noticing this a first goal is presented: finding a key.
A blue, upside down bucket on the railing that is in sharp visual contrast to the red house.
Upon trying to interact with it, the player will discover that smaller objects can be picked up with the left mouse button.
Upon pressing the door, a click sound is played while the door handle is being pulled down for as long as the mouse button is held, indicating that the door is now unlocked, but needs further interaction. If the mouse is moved, the door will make a creaking noise and open up.
Present goal
Direct attention
Self evidence
Feedback
Self explanatory puzzles
The puzzle design is often self explanatory, here is an example:
The protagonist will verbally comment that some sort of item is required to communicate with the ouija board, and hopes that a simple glass will suffice. The player is then left with no further instructions. While they are free to roam, the player will have to seek the answer to the puzzle within their real world experience. The glass is located in one of the cabinets above the sink in the kitchen, and any of the glass meshes work as the requested item.
THE HORROR AND PUZZLE PARADOX
Horror-puzzle games works because they offer the unique challenge of trying to control your fears by keeping your calm and using your wits to escape a situation. The rational player is having an internal battle with their primitive ancestor who is wired to escape predators.
Sooner or later in a puzzle game, the player gets stuck. Which leads to: Boredom. The last thing I want the player to feel in a horror game. How have I addressed this in the design of MOR?
#1: Reduced difficulty of the puzzles
The puzzles have a lower difficulty but balance still needs to be considered, puzzles need to come with a challenge, otherwise they are pointless.
None of the puzzle solutions contains a perceptual shift.
If the player ever feels lost, they can always open their notebook which often contains hints about what they need to do next.
Paranormal events direct the player’s attention to where they should go. An example of this is when the ghost wants to show the player how they died. An auditory cue of a pouring bathtub tap can be heard from the bathroom which leads the player to the area of the next puzzle.
How the ghost directs the player
#2: Incorporated horror into the puzzles
Included psychological horror elements to the foundation of the puzzles themselves. One example from the game:
The glowing star sky puzzle:
This puzzle is encountered right after the player has visually seen the ghost for the first time. The player should be somewhat on edge, knowing that the game just stepped up the horror factor a notch. When they are let out of the closet where the scare took place (marked with a red x on the overview), they will notice that a huge amount of glow in the dark stars have appeared on the ceiling all over the house.
A lamp directly in front of them flickers, and in its vicinity, a trail of stars in the star sky is flickering brighter than other stars, indicating that some of the stars seems to be affected by lightning. The player has to turn off the ceiling lamps in the house to reveal the glowing trail of stars. The player has to voluntarily give up the comfort of light to solve the puzzle, even though they have just faced the ghost head on.
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Video of a player interacting with the puzzle.
#3: Automated Horror System
I designed an automated horror system that dynamically generates horror events to keep the player engaged when they are stuck. This system will ensure that the game stays scary even when the player doesn’t progress by triggering auditory and visual cues to scare the player when they least expect it. It is heavily dependent on the player’s position and camera angle.
Video of the horror system firing
Reduced
Reduced for each chapter the player finishes, meaning that the system will trigger more frequently toward the end of the game.
Timer
A set amount of time after the last puzzle object interaction or the horror system last fired.
Paused
Paused when the player is in a ouija board session or has an active voice line to prevent awkward scares when the story is being delivered.
Trigger
The outcome is randomly selected from a list of possible scare types.
#4: Leaving Space For the Player's imagination
I had to be economical with the amount of scenes where the ghost is showed. Nothing we could make in 10 weeks would be scarier than the player’s imagination. I consciously decided that I would leave room for the player to project the threat in their mind as much as possible by letting the atmosphere speak for itself.
Overview Island
I needed a natural explanation to why the player can't leave the map to avoid invisible walls. I choose an island surrounded by a thick mist to save the artists from making background assets. This setting was confined, uncertain and cheap to produce.
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Start
Cellar
Shed
House
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Darkness
The outside was intentionally made very dark. The idea was to drive the player to get inside. I wanted the player to feel watched and unsafe.
Rauks
Rauks were placed as landmarks silhouetted against the moonlight to direct the player to the cellar in the dark.
House
The house is the centerpiece of the island and the only object that emits light to signify that it's the key point of the map. The shed is placed in front of the house, leaving a mark in the player's memory of its location as they walk past it.
Process of Island creation
I hammered out basic aspects of the level by placing out a simple version of the house, sculpted out the island dimensions and populated key locations with static foliage. At this point, I just tried to get a sense of scale and the relationships between the areas while I clocked the traveling distances.
First draft
I tried to find the feel of the level by playing with lightning, painting out real foliage and decorating the level with rocks and mist.
Second draft
Final version
This step was dedicated to attention to detail and bringing the atmosphere to the next level. I added reflection to the water surface, wind zones to make the foliage move and removed excess foliage to optimize performance.
Level design
Isolation
The player should feel alone
Mor's level design is permeated by three key words
Uncertainty
The player should question their safety
Scope
Look complete despite short dev cycle
Overview House
I considered multiple different house layouts. I was looking for something that had a realistic layout in terms of old school Swedish architecture, something that was easy to navigate and something with a circular design. I decided on version 4. The mother's bedroom (BR1) was supposed to be locked for the majority of the game, it was therefore the deepest positioned room in the house to create a feeling of forbiddenness and progression.
Finally, decoration was hand placed and rotated to make the rooms feel lived in. Several iterations of light baking and adjustments of lightsource placement was also important in this step to finalize the scene.
Final version
Next thing was to add furniture and assets that would affect the navigation in the environment. During this stage, a lot of assets were moved around to accomodate for both aesthetics and gameplay. Basic lightning was also added to find the right atmosphere.
Process of house creation
Second draft
First draft
The house was not modular which meant I had a close collaboration with the art team when adjusting the proportions of the rooms. In this step, it was all about nailing down the layout, windows placements, doorways and dimensions of all rooms. I also tuned the player controller to get an early sense of the game feel.
