PANOPTICON
The game I'm most proud of so far is a level-based horror game named PANOPTICON. In it, you're stuck inside a monochromatic jail tower while a mannequin stalks the shadows. Your only defense is the light– the mannequin refuses to move when in the spotlight. The game comprises 10 levels of varying surroundings, each with its own strong identity and challenges.
The core statement for PANOPTICON was "A classic style labyrinth with a hide-and-seek twist. A surreal prison contains a dangerous enemy that thrives in the dark– the player must stay in the light to survive."
The idea for this game started from the concept of a panopticon prison, being a circular building with a one-layer thick ring of jail cells aligned around a central watchtower. The guard in the watchtower could turn and look at any part of the prison from one position at any time, totally removing any chance of privacy or secrecy the prisoners may have. The idea was so invasive and creepy to me that I decided to explore that idea and see if I could make a game with it. After some thought, I decided that avoiding the sight of the "watchman" would lead to a very stationary and aggravating game, so I took a different approach– what if something ELSE needed to play by the watchman's rules, and the player had to use that rule to their own benefit? What resulted was a blend of exploration and pursuit that I'm very happy with.
My ultimate goal was to make each level feel unique and create their own identity while still being coherent to the overall theme. To do this, I centered each level around the idea of a functional room; there's a library, a storage room for other mannequins, and even a graveyard. Each function served to inform its geometry, and the geometry all had an important consideration in mind from the get-go; the directional light. At the center of the tower is the titular panopticon, a rotating lighthouse-like cone of brightness. It's the only source of light in Panopticon, meaning that all obstacles had to be carefully placed to create small pockets of shadow to make the level reasonably traversable.
Panopticon's levels all went through several iterations due to this fact. Having a harsh, unidirectionally moving light source for the game's only source of vision was, perhaps unsurprisingly, very hard to design for. One level, The Cages, underwent weeks of retooling due to this– I had to redesign the level from the ground up numerous times. The result gave me something that I'm deeply proud of; an unsettling experience with a strong sense of identity, and an uncompromising attitude and unique attitude towards lighting.
A big change I ended up making was that initially, if the player character was in the dark, it was completely impossible to see anything at all. The darkness was completely absolute. This was a deliberate decision due to my frustration at there being no absolute darkness in games. I rapidly found out that there's a reason for the lack of total darkness in games– players were having a miserable time trying to navigate when in the dark because there was no way to orient yourself or figure out the geometry of the level. Faced with the reality of the situation, I caved and added a faint bluish light to the player, so that the player was never totally in the dark. It was a good decision– players immediately had a lot more fun piloting the game.
Ultimately, I was very satisfied with how it ended up. It's the project I'm probably the most proud of, out of anything I've made at Art Center. It's the most fully featured project, and the closest I've gotten to making a full game. I plan on revisiting it and cleaning it up, and adding more features/revamping the systems.
