Breathe Rework Introduction

Breathe is the first video game project I worked on. The concept was originally created by Ash King for a 300-level university assignment. The pitch for the game was a deep-sea horror game that revolved around frightening sea creatures and surviving in an environment with little oxygen and light. The game was made in a team of 6: 3 visual designers and 3 programmers. It was developed over several months for the assignment and ended with a relatively impressive game. The audio recording of breathing really adds pressure to the game and slowly becomes more strained as time decreases. Anglerfish chase and attack the player throughout the level, a swarm of smaller fish block the way forward in parts and a goblin shark roams the outside of the tower, attacking anyone who lingers out too long. The final environment was an old abandoned oil tower. There is a total of 10 floors that the user needs to navigate through that range from wide open floors that creatures can attack from all sides to tight mazes that are designed to waste the users air. While there was nothing wrong with what everyone did in the project, there was some disconnection between the designers for the final outcome. 

The environment focused heavily on rusted metals and biohazard containers. The colours are dark and dull, emphasizing the fact that the environment is broken down and old. The floors were split up between designers who had free reign over designing whatever layout they wanted. After every third floor, the user is rewarded with a safe zone. No enemies had access to these zones and the players oxygen did not decrease while they were in these rooms. When the user reached the top floor, there was an elevator that took them to the surface, thus ending the game. 

The issues that I find in the game are with the cohesion of the assets. While the tower is a dark, rusted, old looking structure, and the creatures are dark, gritty and believable for a deep-sea location, the character appears to be more technologically advanced and sci-fi. Bright glowing lights, an animated gun and a bright torch remove the intensity of the game. The impact of the environment is minimized by the appearance of the character, who doesn’t feel like they belong in the scenario at all. The player a has a sci-fi looking weapon which fires a shot of compressed air, using a small part of your oxygen reserves to force the enemies back. This removes the intensity of the enemies and makes it feel less like a survival game and more like an action thriller game. The drawback of using your air reserves to attack the enemies does not have enough of an impact on the player to feel like a risk.

Other issues include an ambient light over the entire scene that makes everything look lighter. The environment lighting is not dark enough for a deep-sea location. The player can see a fair distance in front of them through the haze, which makes the torch far less important than it should be in the deep ocean.

I have decided to revisit Breathe and recreate it. I have now worked on multiple different games and have worked in both Unity 3D and Unreal Engine. I have 3 more years of 3D experience under my belt and would like to create Breathe in a way that could be terrifying and intense. I and going to look at the horror genre itself and see what was successful and why and use the research to create a deep-sea horror game focused on survival and resource management. 

I am using games like Prey (2017) and Alien: Isolation (2016) as inspiration to create the environment. A large research station seems like a better environment for the player, which will embrace the sci-fi elements of the concept. By inventing a deep-sea trench, I can also play around with the creatures the player will encounter. Bioluminescent creature’s and giant sea creatures will be the main encounters in the game and the ability to fight back will be minimized or completely removed.