- The Cabin -

Description of Project

This game was a second-year school project, developed in a team of six. We set out to create a creepy, paranormal murder-mystery "whodunnit" set in a remote cabin during a reunion of old friends. What begins as a classic detective story, gradually unravels into a psychological horror experience, as the player discovers that the true threat isn't one of the friends, but the cabin itself, which feeds on the lives of the people in it.

The game is a 2D pixel art experience with visual novel-style dialogue interactions, inspired by titles like Omori, Stillwater, and Dead Plate. We made it with Unity, Blender and Aseprite, and it's designed for fans of narrative horror and mystery games.

For this project, I was responsible for designing the core feel of the game, including player movement, interactions, and main mechanics. I also contributed some thoughts to the writing and gave base level input on the art.

Main Mechanic

Since we were making an information-heavy game, I collected and analyzed multiple references which led to the key insight that giving players a clear system to organize evidence was crucial. This inspired the concept of a "crime board" system that exists inside the player's head. Players are given a camera to take pictures of "evidence", which are automatically added to this bulletin board. By clicking on a button, the player closes their eyes and visualizes the board displaying all collected evidence displayed as Polaroid-style photos with bolded keywords for each. The key words allow the images to be linked to other Polaroids with matching or related clues using a thread, giving visual feedback on whether the connection is correct ( incorrect links will not connect).

Playtests

The development process involved playtesting and documentation, which provided valuable experience in refining and iterating on games with real user feedback. We did two rounds of playtesting with a total of 6 participants. Both playtests used a paper prototype of the cabin and followed the same structure, with adjustments made between sessions such as different clues, room layouts and introductory text to fine-tune the mystery.

Every room was printed as a top-down layout on separate sheets, with any iteractable object being labeled with post-it notes. Players "investigated" by flipping the post-its, revealing descriptions or clues on the back. Key items had more detailed descriptions, which were marked with "ask for notes" and then read out loud to the tester.

Character cutouts were made, including the victim, and could be used for dialogue, with a team member role-playing the responses. The tester could explore rooms freely, and use a pen and paper to simulate the in-game mind map system. Each session began with an intro text and ended with a feedback survey.

Visual Effects

Some of the assets were designed to look like body parts, like this ceiling resembling a rib cage.

The idea that the cabin has absorbed previous victims is reflected in interior details based on their clothing, e.g. the kitchen tiles match the pattern of a hatband.

Major Learnings

One major takeaway was that our story a little too ambitious for the scope of the project. We had to cut a lot to keep the pacing from feeling rushed and to allow the demo to build tension more naturally, but that became obvious through playtests and wasn't an issue we faced during the actual development of the game.

Another important lesson was in lighting and visibility. Our goal was to create a dark, eerie cabin atmosphere (due to a power outage in the story), but this sometimes made the environment hard to see, which affected the clarity of the gameplay.

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