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Game Description
Stars Don't die is a retro-style first person horror game where you will be chased through an abandoned bunker by a mysterious entity - but what you find through the old corridors may surprise you!
Story
Can you hear them trying to breathe? They roam this dark environment, waiting for change, and then you arrive. Navigate the dark landscape using the remnants left by those who came before you. You must cling to the hope given to you by the deity's most expressive child and find a way to free it and only hopefully yourself in the process.
Sketches
My instructions for this project were to design a bunker that would be reminiscent of liminal spaces and would be confusing and surprising for the player, and which involved a ballroom and an altar. When laying it out, I decided to create confusion by making it a maze which seemingly didn't respect the rules of physics. Two corridors turning in the same direction, dead ends, and rooms that seemed out of place.
Building the level
Working with a 3D modeler forced me to respect the measures I'd drawn on paper to the meter, which forced me to make some adjustments to my original layout, and some rooms had to disappear. Other than that, the in game layout remained faithful to my original plans.
Underground Level
I came up with, pitched, was green lit for, and implemented the idea of an underground level. The idea was to let the player unlock this area through a key, which would then make it faster to navigate from one point to the other, and unlock secrets.
It created some replayability value, and created a feeling of progression in those players who found it, adding some depth to the experience.
Guiding lights
Through playtesting, it soon became apparent that I had reached my goal a little too well: the level was too dark and confusing, losing the player to a frustrating extent. I even lost myself in my own level. In order to fix this, I added lights to guide the player through the darker corridors. Discussions with the character designer also led to making the antagonist glow red. This way, the player would be led by lights from point of interest to point of interest, while secrets and pickups remained in the dark, for the players to find while exploring.
Safe Rooms
It was decided to let the player breathe and find safety through the use of safe rooms. I placed them near the more interesting rooms, some hidden, and made sure to make the areas surrounding them less confusing and easy to navigate, to give the player a feeling of relief both in the gameplay and in the environment. I also limited myself to the use of warm lights, to contrast the colder tones of the rest of the level.