ROGER MATTHEWS
unreal/unity experience designer
Design Summary
- You are stuck inside a subway station populated by animals frozen in time.
- In order to escape this loose adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, your character needs to un-freeze the animals so that they can gather together to have a "Tea Party," which will return time to its normal state.
Scripting
- Used Blueprints to script character movement, animation, and dialogue playback.
Narrative
- Cut together sound bites from audiobook recording of Alice in Wonderland relating to time and the tea party.
Aesthetics
- Manipulated post processing and lighting to create different looks for level, referencing lighting of the film Eraserhead.
Process
- Initially story information was more explicit and conveyed from more audio sources - cell phones, old fashioned phones in the subway, and intercoms. A larger story was conveyed about the character Time being behind the time disturbances.
- During play testing the longer explicit sound bites and additional sources took away from the intended surreal experience, and so I focused on only the animals speaking to you in short cryptic riddles that more broadly connected to the bigger themes.
Underground Wonderland
Exhibited at PAX East 2020 as part of the Becker College student showcase.
Made in Unreal.
Assets used:
Design Summary
- You play as the remaining crew member of a space ship that is making its way back to Earth when its machinery starts to explode and catch fire. The ship's artificial gravity system shuts off, and the ship begins hurtling rapidly towards the Earth.
- Before time runs out, you need to bring the ship's computer systems back online by putting out the fires that are spreading throughout the ship.
Scripting/Programming
- Created custom zero gravity system, which depending on the ship's state, had the player either walk normally or fly around using their space suit.
Aesthetics
- I started with art assets intended for a bright modern space station, but since the ship needed to feel threatening and unsafe, I focused on creating small high contrast light sources such as flames, a flashlight, and red ship warning lights. To indicate that the ship was functional, I turned on cool, fluorescent light sources that lit up parts of the ship.