There is something that is just so cool about horror games to me. Whether it's the straight to the point fear of SCP: Containment Breach or something more subtle and sinister like the emptiness of a Garry's Mod world with nobody in it.

When making MovieHorror (temporary name), I wanted to try and recreate this sense of unease that one might find with these kinds of games. The feeling that theres something more than what you perceive, or that you are being watched.

While designing the game, I took great care to ensure that interactability would be a big feature of this game. After all, the game playing itself around you would never be scary, as you need to feel truly immersed to be able to jump at something unexpected.

The principle I tried to follow was, if I were exploring an abandoned and haunted movie theatre. What would I want to touch? We can start out with the obvious stuff like light switches and chairs, but the real fun comes when we design even the smallest stuff for intractability. There's an extra layer of value a game has when a player can pick up a bucket of popcorn from between seats and throw individual kernels across the level.

Programmatically, all interactable objects are implemented as a child of the base Interactable class (e.g. InteractableDoor inherits basic functions from Interactable, but we add extra variables and functions for locking the door.)

I used an amazing voxel art editor called MagicaVoxel by ephtracy. This allowed me to quickly create an environment in a charming style without having to deal with high-resolution modeling. For the level, I chose a dull color palette for things like the floor and railings and a deep red for chairs and other trim pieces along the level.

We can utilize lighting, of course, to bring an ominous feel to the level. By reducing light levels and making sure the light is set to a warmer hue, it can make the environment feel more aged, as compared to cooler lighting which might remind the player of daylight.

We also use light probes instead of real time lighting to increase performance and also allow for accurate lighting on moving objects, like the player's flashlight.

While not much work has been done on the UI/UX yet, I thought it was important to take priority in input suggestions. Since this game will focus on intractability to bring the world to life, it may be necessary to show input tooltips for some objects, to avoid player confusion, while also doing so in a manner that is unobtrusive and doesn't break the ambiance.

Later down the road, I hope to implement a user interface that is more integrated into the gameplay than an actual menu, such as a checklist on a clipboard the player carries and looks at, rather than a modal or any other sort of interface element.