Official Synopsis
Samantha No More is a 3D Atmospheric puzzle game. You play as Jeremy, as he navigates through an old abandoned house trying to uncover what has happened to his friend Samantha.
Project Overview
Engine: Unity 2020.1.10f1
Genre: First Person, Puzzle, Atmospheric, Horror
Release: 27th June 2022.
Timeline: 6 Weeks (16/05/2022 - 27/05/2022)
Roles: Design, Programming (C#)
Team Size: 1
Samantha No More was created within 6 weeks. I was given a brief that I had to follow and created a game around that. The brief is outlined here:
Brief:
Atmospheric 3D game.
Must be first person viewpoint.
Can be short.
Must include main characters, a pair of adventurous high school kids named Mathilda and Jeremy who are searching for their missing friend Samantha in a deserted building.
My Contributions for Samantha No More
Apart from the art assets, everything else in the game was done by myself. I did all of the programming, puzzle design, level design and wrote the story based upon the brief I was given.
Within the 6 weeks I learnt a lot within Unity and Samantha No More was a great learning experience for me. The game went through many different iterations throughout its development. Making many significant changes due to feedback from playtests and the clients. Although it is quite a short experience, I am still very proud of it, considering it was my first real “Solo Dev” Project and I had to learn C# to get it working as intended.
Having to write scripts, edit and bug fix them whilst also designing the entire experience from scratch definitely proved to be difficult, but I overcame these challenges and delivered a playable experience from start to finish within the allocated time frame.
Gameplay Elements
The Game is essentially one big puzzle, with the end goal being to “Find Samantha’s Phone”. The phone is located in the garage. However Samantha being the Person she is, has set up a complex puzzle for her friends to solve.
Players can press F to to call the phone and listen out for it. The phone’s position is static but the sound will come from the location, so players using headphones will be able to hear where the ring is coming from.
In order to figure out the puzzle, you must first Identify how many hand bloody hand prints or on each Haunted picture above the switch.
When close enough Jeremy will ask Mathilda to figure out which switch to pull. She will then reply with an answer that is somewhat vague stating “Number 4 comes after number 3” or Number 5 is Third in the sequence” The player must then memorise the sequence and then input each switch correctly in order to open the garage!
However whilst playing the player will notice that one of the doors is locked, and they must find a key to open it. The Key is located within the toilet. (This is something that if i had more time, would make more obvious and clue players in on, as in this current version the only way players would know this is if they click on the toilet lid)
Once the player finds the key and opens the hallway to the garage they will find switch number 3 and the Breaker box. Once the switches have been pulled in the correct order, players will be able to press the “test” button on the breaker box and then advance into the garage, wehre they must find one final key.
Once the final key is found, players go into the room where Samantha’s phone is and Collect it. This is where the experience ends..
Map Design
The Map layout went through many changes during the block out. Originally being much larger in size (Was originally an abandoned hotel), I realised that with the time that I had, needed to scope down and focus on quality puzzles, rather than a larger and more “empty” space.
Reducing the map to a house, gave me more flexibility and time to focus on crafting a shorter and more concise version of the game, which actually helped and improved the game’s pacing and structure.
Changing the playable area to a house, meant that I had to re-write the story and some dialogue to make the game, make sense. But in the end it worked better than i originally had thought.
There is a little Easter egg in the game, that allows you to get to the original “Abandoned Hotel”, but if you want o find it, you’ll have to play the game and find it yourself.
Full Game Walkthrough
Samantha No More Official Trailer
