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.
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
Working on Until Dawn has granted me some insight into the challenges posed by building a AAA quality game with a very large team. In order to avoid expensive miscommunications and ensure a standardised quality across the game, I upheld frequent and clear communication with my team and others when appropriate. I co-ordinated often with my producer and other members of the design team via slack to address and discuss solutions for issues, whilst being mindful of our resources and priorities. I also carefully wrote up detailed reports for issues in Jira and directly spoke with those I knew could help where the design team required support from other departments to fix or improve a feature/scene in the game. I feel I successfully contributed to the team in this regard, providing support where my skills were applicable, and gathering advice or direct help from other disciplines where it was either needed or more efficient to do so.
A definite challenge I found with Until Dawn is the sheer amount of detail, iteration and polish required for every scene in the game. I quickly learned on this project just how much more work it is, to get a moment in the game to be excellent and aiming to be flawless, than how much it takes to get it functional and just look or feel right. On top of this, as the game is a remake, quality was particularly stressed during this project, with the experience both having to replicate and creatively improve on the existing original title. A lot of my time went into iterating on specific moments of the levels I was responsible for, gathering feedback from other developers, mastering the use of proprietary tools and game systems, and working alongside engineers to add to those tools so that I could deliver the finest experience.
I have not worked with cinematics or film before, so this was a completely new skillset for me to learn, particularly in how film techniques can be applied to a third person camera and used to build on a ‘player experience’, as well as a ‘viewer experience’. I actually really appreciated and enjoyed this aspect of my role, as I quite like film and have always wanted an opportunity to learn a bit more about cameras and their role in story telling.
The work I am most proud of is definitely my contribution to the Companion AI system, as it was a feature I solely was responsible for implementing and maintaining the design elements for. This responsibility really scratched an itch, allowing me to really get involved with the more technical side of game design, working directly with visual scripting and alongside engineers to problem solve and fix issues as we discover them. The system had a number of firm limitations, making every level I worked on an engaging challenge where I usually had to think of creative solutions to realise the behaviour I wanted the AI portray.