Lost Paths

Content

1. Project Summary and Structure

2. Story

3. Walkthrough

4. Level Design

5. Mechanics

6. Conclusion

Project Summary and Structure

In Lost Paths, the player must explore an old and abandoned house to banish evil. The goal was to address topics such as horror, ancient legends, curfew, and lockdown. Hereby, building the level was the most crucial part since storytelling should also be conveyed by it. The project revolves around the Navajo skinwalker legend. In order to not appropriate the culture, an extensive amount of research was done. Furthermore, I familiarized myself with the language to gain basic knowledge to read papers.

The following video shows a complete walkthrough of the level.

Story

The player follows the story of a young woman returning to her estranged family's home. While her family has always believed in legends and myths, she did not and moved away as soon as possible, only to not return for years. When unexplainable events occurred, leading to the death of her father, she inherited her old family home, in which her father had been living with a caretaker. She returns to the house when she cannot contact the caretaker and decides to assess the situation.

The locals hold firm beliefs in supernatural phenomena, so they have described the area as one of balance. Maintaining equality between certain powers such as high and low, good and bad, life and death is key. These forces are irreconcilable, intertwined with each other, reliant upon each other, and desperately needing each other to operate. But if the equilibrium was not completely equated, the consequences following would be grave. And consequences have followed since she abandoned the town.

An old legend has resurfaced again – the skinwalkers. Generally considered a taboo subject and not discussed with outsiders, they are called yee naaldlooshii in the native language, which roughly translates to "with it, he goes on all fours." A widely feared evil witch who has obtained the supernatural power to shapeshift into animals and humans by breaking a cultural taboo such as murder. They creep out in the night and make sounds around houses like knocking on windows, banging on walls, or scraping on the roof. Skinwalkers are considered very volatile and highly dangerous since they live on the unexpired lives of their victims and must therefore kill or perish themselves. Most frequently seen as coyotes, wolves, foxes, eagles, owls, or crows, they can also transform into anything human. By locking eyes with a skinwalker, the skinwalker can enter one's body and take control of the person's actions, forcing them to do things. They are considered not quite human nor entirely animal since they have human eyes in animal form and vice versa. When in human form, they often wear the skin of the animals they transform into, animal skulls bringing them even more power.

She arrives during twilight by car and talks to a local man, who tries to warn her, reminding her of the legend. Yet, she claims she doesn't believe it and makes her way to the house, nevertheless arriving when it has gotten dark.

The old farmhouse stands proudly against the dark sky in the lonely countryside. Some windows are closed with wooden planks bestowing upon the abandoned, decrepit aura of the house. No artificial light illuminates the area; everything is bathed in darkness. Only a few stars and the moon faintly illuminates the surroundings.

The player then starts inside the house.

Walkthrough

• Intro Cutscene: The character arrives in a quaint town during twilight by car. It is the calm before the storm. She talks to a local man. In summary of the conversation, it can be stated that the man is afraid of a local supernatural phenomenon occurring at night. She agrees to lock herself in overnight and not leave. The player is informed that the character is originally from this town but left as soon as possible for her. Furthermore, they are informed that she only returned to check if everything was in order since her father died, and she could not reach his caretaker. The woman makes her way to the house, the wind freshens, and it starts to storm.

• The player starts at the foyer. The light is quite dim, even if the ceiling light is turned on, making it the only lit one in the house so far. Just left of them is a dresser with a burning candle. So, they step closer and find bills (document 1: e). They seem to be older, and their name is crossed out on them. Only the last letter of the name is visible; it is an E.

• The player looks around and sees a door right to his position. They go there and enter the garage. Since it is dark, they press the light switch outside. They are led towards a door at the end of the room. The door is locked, and a key is needed to open it.

• To search for the key and further clues, the player leaves the garage and makes their way to the dining room. A key is clearly visible on the table. The player takes it and decides to try to unlock the door with it.

• The player opens the storage1 and sees the staircase leading down into darkness. There is a light switch just at the head of the stairs that the player presses. Upon this action, muffled sounds can seemingly be heard from the basement; it sounds like something was knocked over. Yet, also, the sounds from the storm can be heard.

• The player goes downstairs and enters the basement. A burning candle a few steps from the foot of the stairs marks an old portrait of a man with his eyes scratched out (document 2: o). When walking around to find their way through the room, they see a burning candle in the right corner. They find a part of an old letter with the number 46 on it (numeric code: 46). As they continue to explore the basement, they see a burning candle at the foot of these stairs. Pictures of the character's family can be found. The faces of the members are the only party intact, and the names can be vaguely read. A figure is drawn on the picture (document 3: h).

• The player arrives at another locked door that leads to storage2. They need a combination of 4 numbers. Since they have already found two numbers, they make their way upstairs to find the remaining.

• Upstairs the player looks around the dining room again to see whether they missed something. When nothing can be found, they make their way to the kitchen. Here they find a shopping list with various items that are addressed to somebody, but their name is crossed out again. Only the letter L can be read (document 4: l).

• In the living room, books about the local wildlife are displayed. One is open, and they read it in the dim light of the candle. A section about coyotes and wolves is readable (document 5: e).

• The player makes their way upstairs since they are still looking for the missing numbers but haven't found them yet.

• The first accessible door on the second floor is locked and requires a key, so they continue to the next door. It can be opened and leads into the office. A burning candle on the desk catches their eye, and they find a drawing of a man wearing a pelt (document 7: a). When they continue to look around, they see another candle. Here, they find notes about the skinwalker mythos (document 6: t).

• They leave the office and walk toward the next door that is just opposite them. It leads them to bedroom 1. A candle is burning at the end of the room. They walk up to it and find the second part of the combination: 19 (numeric code: 19). When they look around to see if they picked everything up, they see another candle and find a short note about the bad electricity in the house, the signature once again unreadable. Only the letter A can be read (document 8: a).

• Before returning to the basement, they decide to visit the last room on this floor. When they enter the bathroom, a burning candle alerts them to medicament prescriptions for somebody. The name cannot be read; only the letter H is visible (document 9: h).

• The player makes his way downstairs and opens the door with the code they found: 4619. They enter the code correctly and open the door, entering storage2

• storage2 is filled with Animals' skulls that are mounted on the wall. A candle on the right side of the room is catching their attention. They find a shaman's note, telling them how to defeat one: by finding out their human name and writing it down in the book of the turned person (document 10: a). Since they have been trying to find out the name of the caretaker all along, they have found a few letters that seem to be part of the name. Yet they are unable to find out the name yet, so something must still be missing. They look around the room and find a key.

• The player remembers the locked door on the second floor, and they make their way upstairs.

• They open bedroom 2. Just opposite the door, a candle is burning, and they find a page with scribbled notes (document 11: h).

• To make sure they have found everything, they look around and see another burning candle, leading them to another diary page. The page is filled with name scribbles, each scribble containing a different readable letter. They have now found the name: Ahote Hathale.

• They make their way downstairs, and when they are in the storage2 room again, they write the name in the book.

• Outro Cutscene: The written down name changes into the main character's name (Leah T. Otha), and the screen fades to black.

Level Design

The house itself consists of three floors - a ground floor, an upper floor, and a basement. Each has multiple rooms and interactable objects. The general condition of the house is rundown and abandoned to fit the horror theme.

In order to visualize the condition and feel of the house, it has been built in The Sims 4. Furthermore, it was necessary to verify whether the blueprints of the house are actually executable and buildable and if the layout of the rooms, as well as the item placement, make sense.

The molecule, proximity, and detailed maps are displayed down below. Since icons are used in each of them, the legend is shown here.

The molecule map was used to determine the connection between the rooms and floors of the house.

To visualize the house's ground plan, the proximity map was used. Since the house was built in Sims 4, the appropriate dimensions were already evident. Therefore, here the placement of certain objects as well as the doors and windows were planned out.

The remaining collectible placement was determined via the detailed design map.

The whole level was then blockouted in the Unreal Engine 4.

After that, the game was built using assets from asset packs. Hereby, the furniture was placed first, and then decals, as well as spiderwebs, were added.

To stay true to the topic, the lighting of the scene was necessary. With the prevailing mood being dark and gloomy, it had to be lighted that way. A problem was encountered since the player was able to turn off and on most ceiling lights with a switch, and therefore the predominant lighting had to be exactly right. Meaning the theme had to be adhered to even while the lights were on. So, the house must not be too dark without extra lights but also not too bright with the dome lights. The volumetric fog was used to enhance the feeling of being in an old and abandoned home since it also made the light cones visible.

Basic lighting was achieved by using rect lights:

Documents and other interactable objects were mostly highlighted by a light source.

Mechanics

Lost Paths required a multitude of mechanics to have a functioning game loop. Therefore, the decision was made to blueprint them before building the level. This was due to the fact that it was easier to adjust the planning should something go wrong and not build parts of the game again.

The first thing that was blueprinted was the item system. The base functionality was taken from Ryan Laleys tutorials on YouTube but modified to fit the game. The player should not only be able to inspect objects with the respective tag but also use them to open doors and unlock the ending.

There are a total of twelve collectibles to be found in Lost Paths. To keep track of the different objects, they are counted in the item parent blueprint. Here, an array from the player class is searched for whether it already contains the picked-up object.

In the player class, the object name is compared to pre-defined values.

If the item name is equal to one of the cases, a boolean is set to true.

It is the player's goal to pick up all notes and uncover the name. Therefore, a letter is made visible for every collected letter. In the ending blueprint, the visibility of the mesh is set to true if the before mentioned case in the player blueprint is valid and it's not visible already.

The ending cutscene is triggered as soon as the last letter is visible and the player is near the book.

There are three types of doors in Lost Paths that are all similar in structure. The player can open a door by pressing E when near it. If it doesn't require a code or a key, the door opens. A requirement was that the doors could be opened and closed by the player. In order to prevent the door from colliding with the player and making them fly across the level, the collision was disabled on interaction.

Should the player encounter a door that requires a key, a tooltip is displayed to encourage them to search for it. Furthermore, the door opens if the currently held item holds the key tag.

One door is locked via a tumbler lock. The player is able to spin the tumblers and enter the correct combination. The numbers is determined by the tumbler rotation.

The required combination is checked in a separate function, and when entered correctly, the door is unlocked.

To enhance the players' experience while playing and heighten interactable objects' visibility, they receive a white outline.

Light switches, as well as flickering lights and sound effects, were also implemented. Furthermore, a simple menu structure was added.

Conclusion

The development and time management of Lost Paths went by exceptionally well. It was possible for me to familiarize myself with the lighting and atmosphere to a deeper level and apply the gathered knowledge. Since it was the first project I developed from scratch in the Unreal Engine, it was definitely a huge learning experience for me. And I was able to get into blueprinting. Therefore, the decision to script the mechanics before building the game was the right one.