About - Night Watch | MTL-Portfolio

About Night Watch

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Night Watch is a short atmospheric horror game set in a remote laundromat where you are working as a night guard. My main goals with this game were to create a compelling short story and an interesting and detailed environment. Up until now most of my projects had been 2D games and thus I wasn't focusing on the worlds as much as you might in games with more focused perspectives. With this project I was hoping to make the world feel real enough that a person could get immersed in it. Staying away from forced narrative, which I had done in "Abandoned", all of the story is told through sound ques and messages in the world. I feel that this allows for the player to think about and see whats going on rather than being told everything.

Audio:

Sound was a major component of this game and thus I spent a good deal of time finding audio to put into the project. The vast majority of my audio came from Freesound.org, a site which contains many CC0 audio tracks but I collected some audio myself. After adding the files, I would positions the audio in relation to a physical object and then attach it to the audio mixer. Through changes in dB levels and some overlay effects, I attempted to make the audio feel believable. Through the combination of other nearby audio sources I was able to adjust mixer levels to create a soundscape which prioritized the most important sounds in each area.

Of course, having this many audio tracks playing at once can start to cause performance issues. This is where I started to adjust audio import settings for every track, some being compressed for file size and others to avoid overuse of the CPU. Using the Unity Audio Clip documentation along with a useful article "Wrong import settings are killing your Unity game" I was able to reduce audio loads and file sizes by a great deal.

Environment:

Another important aspect I wanted to nail with Night Watch was the 3D environment. I had made some 3D games before this but was never happy with the level of detail or quality. Through the use of store assets from the Unity asset store and from places like opengameart.org, I was able to collect tons of props and materials to populate my environment. Some assets present in the scene were also of my own making as I wanted custom assets for story elements.

Simple newspaper object with a plane on top containing the text. I used this to provide some background to the games story.

Props litter the ground such as bottles, flyers, broken glass, and cans to fill empty spaces in the level.

A board that stands outside of the play area. I created the message posted on it to suggest a deeper background to the story.

Interior spaces make a good use of furniture and light sources.

Over the top of all the assets, post processing, lighting, and render textures improve the look of the scene greatly.

Level Design:

Because Night Watch is such a short game, it was rather simple to create a level to accommodate everything the player would need to do. The entire story revolves around the player trying to maintain this small laundromat that has power problems. You also do some small chores over the course of your shift, and so need to take out the garbage. The player starts in the office space of the building and is allowed to walk around the space. The first call to action is the machines in the next room turning on. A message on the wall states that if too many machines are active, the power will shut off. The same message also provides the player with controls.

The player should want to exit the room at this point but will find that the door into the next room is locked. By interacting with a glowing key inside of their room, they can proceed. This acts as a sort of impromptu tutorial on how to interact and move through the space. Once out of the room, the player follows both audio and visual ques that lead them through the rest of the story and eventually to the end.

1. Player moves from office to laundry to turn off machines

2. Player moves to dumpster to throw away trash

3. Player moves to go inside but is locked out (power goes out)

4. Player moves back to the office through the back door (turns power back on)

5. Player moves back to laundry to stop machines but returns to office and dies

By being able to condense the design into such a small space I was able to add more detail and quality into each second of gameplay. Because of its linearity I was also able to identify where the player might be looking or what they might be doing, allowing for more targeted events to occur to scare them or lead them in certain directions.