ENS

DEVELOPMENT

The development of this project started a bit unsual compared to our course projects. This time, I and Justus Kerker planned on just making an experimental little horror game which started back in march 2020 right after our third semester project.

The first month, we were a team of two and iterated through different ideas and concepts. We had this idea of a neutral ai that changes the map and room layouts depending on how well the player behaves.

 

Through interactions with pictures ( zooming in with the right mouse button on a picture ) , the player is able to find secrets and open passage ways.

 

Originally, the players goal was to steal something from the inner core of the map and has to run out as fast as possible, while the ai tries to block and catch him.

 

When Jona Louis joined us on the development, we changed the concept as we were discussing potential settings and themes.

As we were doing the Game Design and core Narrative together, we still assigned core roles that everyone can focus on. I was assigned to do all Art Direction and Visual Asset Creation for this project as well as designing the base behaviour of the AI Entity.

 

This project has a major difference compared to all other projects we had done before. We wouldn't be able to work on it the whole week. Instead, we worked like every second weekend for one day over a timespan of 3 years.

There weeks and months we didn't work on this project at all. In fact, this project was more like a small get together. We would meet up, have a breakfast, work on the project and just chat for the day, making dinner, then watch the old XFactor series with Jonathan Frakes and then play through the Silent Hill series.

The Covid pandemic used to be a problem at the beginning until the restrictions for meet ups where loosen up enough.

 

In the entire development timespan, we achieved to play Silent Hill 1, 2, 3, 4 :The Room and Downpoor, always getting more and more inspiration in for some things.

 

The end concept we were focused on was about a bailiff, who was evicting a broken family of a single father and his daughter in Brighton. 

As the main character enters there apartment, the family flees through a weirdly stretched closet. Because our protagonis required the signature, he has to follow them and finds himself in a surreal environment.

 

He finds a pulsating orb in the middle of floating platform and begins his journey through endless halls of the ENS.

 

The core gameplay is similiar to what we originally started with. We have a labirynth like environment with different passage ways. The player can interact with wall objects by looking at them to open passages or change the gravity in a room.

The goal is to find 4 key memory objects to get through the main entrance hall.

These key objects are placed in 4 rooms of which every room holds a puzzle to solve.

The players behaviour can influence the ENS AI with hostile or good behaviour, by avoid stepping on ornaments or running and instead solving the puzzles. 

FAKESCREENSHOTS / VISUAL CONCEPTS

As we were discussing about the setting and theme for ENS, I was experimenting with different ideas. Our core direction would be brutalism for the main environment. Outside should be more of a poor workers district with apartments too small for even two persons to stay in. I iterated through a mix of sci fi focused environments at first as the ENS itself wasn't really some Monster.

However inside this world it was real and so we had the options of either heaving an ancient entity that absorbs the memories of the humans or something more abstract alien like.

CONCEPT DESIGN ITERATIONS

Since the core ideas of the visual concepts didn't help us much at the time, I decided to take things a few steps back and just experiment with what Unity's HDRP pipeline was capable at the time. For the style I was aiming for, I would have preferred working with Unreal Engine 4 but I would be the only one having experience with it. So I was trying to make the best out of Unity's systems and it really got to some interesting results which established our first real visual direction. 

CONCEPT ANIMATION

IN ENGINE SHOTS

As development proceeds slowly, we managed to create our first puzzle room: The Church.

The key rules were the following:

- The Altar would be the spot for the memory to receive

- It should be accessible from all four directions at the bottom and the top layer - 8 Entrances in total

- The floor would be full of ornaments that players need to avoid. Instead they need to use the benches

- From the top layer and the bottom layer, it has to feel like a sacred place / an abstraction of a church

 

These rules were also similiar to our 3 other puzzle rooms: The Abyss, The Market and The Museum

 

With the church, I was able to try out different modelling methods to find the most suitable for it and also potentially the rest of the environment halls and rooms.  

GAME SHOTS

After 2.5 years of development and consistingly having issues with Unity and the project we decided to finally finish this game off with one week really working on it full time. Since I wasn't doing too much programming anymore, I didn't have the constant unity crashes and lags like the rest of my team. This still really drained our motivation all together and we just wanted it to be over asap. 

 

I tried our best to finish it all, especially me as I was quit lacking behind with visualizing each and every object because I still had to make an entire outdoor environment just for the start of the game.

 

We did manage to finish the game and it was playable for the most part. However it does have enough game breaking bugs that some reviews on each told us, they weren't able to play it because it crashed.

 

One goal of mine is to revisit this project. I talked to my team about the idea of me remaking this project inside Unreal Engine when the time is right.   

© 2025 Roman Wiegand