Until Dawn (2024)

Summary

An Enhanced and Rebuilt version of popular 2015 horror game Until Dawn, developed in Unreal Engine 5 by Ballistic Moon and published by Sony for PC and PS5. The game released on October 4th 2024.

I worked on the project for 14 months from July 2023 to September 2024, as a Junior Designer on a team of 13 designers (collaborating with a team of 70+ at Ballistic Moon). My team oversaw the design of all key gameplay elements of Until Dawn (2024).

My responsibilities shifted between Technical and Level Design, mainly working directly in Unreal Engine 5’s level editor or Unreal Blueprints. I also worked with Animation Blueprints, Unreal Sequencer and custom state machine editing tools.

Previous slide
Next slide

Main Contribution

As a member of the design team, I helped improve the quality of the game’s overall player experience, collaborated with developers of other disciplines to aid with design related issues and contributed to maintaining design documentation for systems and features I worked on.

I was responsible for updating the design and user experience of a variety of levels throughout the game. This included: 

  • Setting up logic events with trigger volumes.
  • Maintaining level collision.
  • Implementing instances of new gameplay systems.
  • Curating gameplay cameras using Until Dawn 2024’s new gameplay camera systems.
 

Other Contributions

Early on in the project, a large portion of my work involved the implementation of interactive cutscenes, working closely with Animation Blueprints and Animation State Machines.

I was the sole designer responsible for the implementation and upkeep of the companion AI system, writing and tweaking state machines in all relevant levels for the companion AI’s behaviour. 

Following from this, I also implemented the majority of the game’s exploration dialogue gesture animations for the player character and companion AI.

Toward the end of the project I supported the effort to polish and fix bugs throughout the game (Using Jira to write up and track issues). 

Achievements and Challenges