Gameplay design: The game was meant to be an exploration adventure, with no combat, as there was very little time to develop the game. In fact, the zombies in the second level don't cause damage at all; they're there to make you hurry up and lit the braziers that destroy them. But the initial design of the third level, with its boss, allowed for some sort of combat system where the player can push explosive pumpkins to the mouth of the beast. The game is set at very easy values in order to allow my niece to play it from end to end in her birthday.

It could've been nice to have more time for more platforming sections, as I had prepared a variety of traps and falling floors. Nevertheless, all the actors created in this mini-game will be quite useful for future games.

Level design: There wasn't much time for iteration, and in some places it shows: The third level, for example, was meant to have a mid level and end level Boss. At the end, there is a single boss, and it's in the middle of the level, instead of the end, as a finale. Moving parts of the level caused chaos on the Sequencer scene, for some reason. Anyways, the level ends with a thrilling platforming section, so it's not bad at all.

The first 2 levels were made with the premise of avoiding too much architecture like in the third map, so here I used the Landscape and Foliage tools to do a quick sketch of the layout. The first level was going to serve as a level hub of sorts, but at the end it became a linear tutorial level, introducing the game mechanics and some sort of narrative ambient

The second is a bit more open, as it has a couple of search quests. The scripting here is the most comple of the 3 levels, as it includes several chained events related to the quests and the NPCs.

Narrative design: The idea was to monster NPCs related to my parents, my sister and her husband, apart from my niece, of course. Some of the text have in-jokes for the family. Time constraints forced me to cut my parents from the game, only appearing in one of the ending videos.

Programming: This has been a test of all the Unreal scripting skills I have gathered over these last 2 years. I had to do entire blueprints for new systems that weren't supported, specially in the self dialogues and tutorial systems. I also learned much about scripting in the Level blueprint, and the importance of keeping things organized for better readability. Some of the systems will be kept; others will have to be rewritten, specially the Quest system, which has shown its limits here. Exciting days, for sure.

Sound design: I quite enjoyed the search for the sounds and music of the game. I modified a few sounds with Audacity to better fit the game theme and ambience. For the music, I had afortunately bought a pack of horror music files, so it was just a matter of finding the best ones. It is one side of game dev I would love to explore more often.