This game is something that I created during a Unreal Engine 4 course in 2021. We had about 1 week to finalize a project after first doing prototyping. The idea is simple, it is a FPS game that takes place on one of Saturns moons that has been devastated by alien enemy forces in the far future.
Even though the gameplay is always one of the absolute most important aspects of games, for me I really wanted to create the atmosphere of a deserted human city taking place in space, to do this i naturally added buildings, vehicles and debrise. My teacher during our presentation commented on the atmosphere and lighting and said that he liked it, that it simulated well the feeling of emptiness and the aspects of space rather well.
To up the feeling of a more alien like experience, I added a green hue to the lighting to simulate that the air has now turned toxic, one of the key elements in the game is to collect oxygen tanks to replenish your health, though the implementation of the poision system were to difficult for me to do so I scrapped it.
Creating the layout took some time, but I knew my game would not be long so I made it heavily linear where there is only one branching path. I had an idea that the player would be able to enter specific buildings to find weapon and ammo, but during my prototyping I spent to long time implementing another important feature, which was the ability to swap weapons.
Swapping the weapons took a long time to implement, as well as enabling the UI. I needed to tell the system which gun I picked up out of a selective few, how much damage each gun did specifically to each specific enemy NPC that had varied HP. And to also enable the correct gun to be swapped on the press of a button.
Towards the end of the game, you reach the final area where a boss would spawn, I wanted the end to feel huge and epic where a spaceship flies down to pick up the player, a bit inspired by the Metroid games where at the end Samus often flies away from the planet where she is at. The added lighting strikes was an idea to further amplify the feeling of the weather on the moon spiraling out of control.
