Astral: Designing a Game
Astral is a game I have been creating since about December 2016 as a university honors project for my sound design course. I am going to start from now creating blog posts on here about the design and development of the game and the sound design process. I will be going over each part with screenshots and videos.
The design process of the game started with planning what the game was going to be and what the player would be doing. I decided early on that I wanted to create a horror game as I have always been a fan of the horror genre whether it be video games or movies. I then decided on setting the game in a sanatorium as it lends itself to the horror genre easily and fit in with the narrative I had in mind. I researched floor plans and diagrams of old sanatoriums to inspire the map design of my game and
below is a top down view of the unlit map I have created in the Unreal Engine editor:
Once the basic design for the level had been planned out I planned what the gameplay would be like and what the controls and mechanics would play like. The idea for the game was to have the player explore a completely dark environment by using sound to create light. In doing this they would be able to find their way around and uncover the story of the area and avoid any enemies that are present in the level. The specifics of what the mechanics are will be covered more thoroughly in a later post.
