Aegir: Submerged is a horror-adventure game inspired aesthetically by 70´s Sci-fi movies such as Alien. The game takes place at a research base on the bottom of the baltic sea where a terrible event has taken place. Returning to the base from a research mission you need to get to the bottom of the mysteries hidden deep within the base.

Designing and implementing all of the puzzles in the game.
Implementing a dialogue system for the game
Implementing dynamic art assets into the game.
Level scripting

Platform | pc

ENGINE | unity

LANGUAGE | c#

pRODUCTION TIME | 7 WEEKS

genre | Horror-adventure

my role | game design/scripting

PUZZLE DESIGN

The puzzles in the game follow a linear progression and where mostly used as a tool to create an atmosphere and scary moments, rather than being challenging.

An example of this is the second puzzle in the game where the power is out and the player needs to find a new powercore to run the backup generator.

Exploring the surroundings, the player finds a derelict submarine with the powercore still active, but needs a tool to get it out.

The game gives text feedback whenever the player lacks the item needed to proceed.

This forces the player to venture farther out into the darkness, where an unknown creature makes its presence known.

You then find a crowbar jammed into a door leading to the inside, both serving as the piece needed to progress and as a piece of enviromental storytelling.

When you venture back to the submarine to get the powercore out the creature shows up again, as a reminder to the player that the outside is a bad place to be.

The game uses a text check to see if the player is carrying the right item.

But when you get the power back on, you get a subtle hint that the inside might not be as safe either.

DIALOGUE SYSTEM

in the original vision for the game the dialogue system was going to have a much larger role in the gameplay, with several multi-choice dialogue trees. But due to cuts to the game, large parts of the scripts had to be remoulded to work with a simpler system.

Both the monologue system and the scanning system (A.S.K) use the same code, modified to fit their individual needs and where set up so that it would automatically get all of the components needed to function, making them easy for another designer to work with.

Monologue

The monologue was a triggerbox where you could manually set the text and the time it was to be on screen. An IEnumerator was used to make the text feel smooth.

A.S.K

The A.S.K was also a triggerbox where you could set text and time it was to be on screen manually. It was connected to an animation that would trigger whenever you interacted with the object.

Dialogue

The dialogues themselves where based on the same principle, where you could manually edit the text in the editor. You could also click to skip text and an IEnumerator was used here as well to get a smooth transition between the texts.