FOQUES
The Vampire Manor's Work Experience Project
Foques is a horror-adventure-platforming game with elements of survival, exploration, and stealth, where you play as Kari, an arctic fox that explores and attempts to escape the dangers of a northern Canada overtaken by a parasitic infection. Survive using Kari's senses, hunting, scavenging, finding water, and escaping the infected animals.
FOQUES is an original IP, owned and currently in development by The Vampire's Manor Studios. The game's concept, characters, story, and setting are all created by them. Check more about the development here!
In this Work Experience project, I had the opportunity to access part of their Game Design Document, as well as narrative and art references and information, to design and implement this playable prototype. All the mechanics showcased here were designed and implemented by me throughout the work of this project, but the game belongs to The Vampire's Manor.
You can find the project's documentation here.
Platform: Windows PC
Engine: Unreal Engine 5.2.1
Other Software: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro, Audacity.
Duration: 2 months
Team Size: Solo
Role: Game Designer (Systems, Mechanics, Gameplay) | Blueprints Programmer
Accomplishments
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Design Extension: Enhanced the original design and documentation to align with the intended player experience.
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Core Systems Design: Built a closed-loop survival system featuring Hunger, Thirst, Health, Sanity, and Stamina that dynamically interact with each other.
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Mechanics Integration: Connected exploration, narrative, and survival mechanics to reinforce the game’s core pillars.
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UI/UX & Feedback: Designed intuitive UI elements and feedback systems to clearly communicate survival status and player actions.
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Blueprint Implementation: Implemented all mechanics and UI functionality using Unreal Engine Blueprints.
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Demo Level Creation: Crafted a playable demo level showcasing all systems working seamlessly together.
Game Design
In FOQUES, the main intended experience is to put the player in the paws of an arctic fox trying to survive an apocalyptic reality of a parasitic infection attacking her home. In doing so, the player not only needs to learn to survive using every fox ability at their disposal, but they also need to learn to work as a community and help other animals, even if these are potential prey and sources of food.
This project is a small playable version of the full-scale game, and not all the mechanics and elements are present. The narrative is an important aspect of the vision, but it's not included in this work. Due to this, some mechanics are introduced and presented in a preliminary way to represent their function and interaction with other mechanics and systems.
Gameplay Pillars
Mechanics
Movement
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Stamina
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Walk / Sprint
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Short Jump / Long Jump / High Jump
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Climb / Climb Jump
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Dodge
Survival
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Health
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Insanity
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Hunger / Thirst
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Hunt / Forage / Drink
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Hideouts / Save animals
Navigation
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Sense (Smell / Danger)
Gameplay Loop
Connecting Survival, Platforming, and Exploration
Stamina
A key goal for this prototype was to create interconnected systems that drive each other while creating the experience of surviving as a fox in the Canadian mountains. For this, I used the Stamina as the main system that connects every aspect of the game. While playing as a fox, the player has multiple skills and abilities to move around, like sprinting, jumping, dodging, and climbing. But being a fox trying to survive requires having constraints on movement. Stamina provides the perfect constraint while giving the player agency, making them take care of this resource while they traverse the world.
Stamina Design
Stamina is needed for every action of the game, and its consumption and availability are altered by the survival elements of Hunger, Thirst, and Sanity.
When reaching half of the Hunger or Thirst meters, the stamina will be restricted to 3/4 of the total. When reaching 1/4 of the survival mechanics, the stamina gets restricted to half of the total.
Stamina is restricted to 3/4
Actions that actively consume stamina, like sprinting, will also make the survival elements of Hunger and Thirst drain faster, making a closed loop that keeps the player taking care of their survival as they traverse and explore, finding new sources of food and water.
Insanity
The way to connect the experience of surviving as a fox in a hostile wilderness, while trying to provoke a sense of community and help other surviving animals, is through the implementation of a Sanity system. Even though Kari is a fox that hunts animals to survive, the intended experience is to evoke in the player a sense of community. This will be highly driven through the game's narrative and quests, but I also tied this to the gameplay mechanics by using a necessary mechanic for survival: hunting. Kari can kill animals (in this prototype, hares) to satiate her Hunger. However, doing so will come with a cost, as killing animals will make her go insane.
Progressing in Insanity will cause the loss of total available Health, as well as making the Stamina consumption higher, and Hunger and Thirst drain faster. This serves as a negative feedback loop that punishes the behaviour of killing helpless animals, and promotes the use of senses to find other sources of food.
To reward the behaviour of not killing the animals and, to the contrary, helping them survive, the way to recover Sanity is by saving animals and taking them to a safe Hideout (more details below).
Hideouts
A crucial mechanic to make all the systems work together while giving the player a chance to fail, learn, and progress is the use of Hideouts as safe places to take refuge from attacking creatures and find shelter to last longer. Inside the Hideouts, the Hunger and Thirst meters drain considerably lower, and predators or stained creatures can't reach them. They also provide comfort through healing one Health Point (or heart), after spending a specific amount of time inside them.
They also contribute to reinforcing the behaviour of helping other animals by being a safe place for them. For this, Kari can call/bark the animals and guide them inside a Hideout. When doing so, Kari can heal a Sanity state.
Guiding a hare into a Hideout
Behind the Scenes: Blueprints
All the functionality of this demo was created using Blueprints and different tools from the Unreal Engine 5 toolkit. Here are some examples.
Charged Jump
The existing design required to have two different types of jumps: a long-distance jump along the movement plane and a vertical one. Following my design direction of creating the experience of playing as a fox, I found it important for these two types of jumps to be integrated into the same action, and giving the player the control to use either one organically and intuitively, by using the same input action for jump, and change it depending on how long the input is hold, and whether there is a movement input direction active.
Every type of jumping uses stamina, and the amount will vary depending on the force (i.e., how long the action is charged). After landing, there is a very small cooldown to avoid jump spamming.
It is possible to jump while sneaking, and it is possible to jump while sprinting, too.
There is no double jumping or jumping in the air, and it is not possible to perform other actions while falling. The reason for this is again to generate the experience of playing as a fox.
Jump uses a Macro to check if it’s possible to jump and uses the built-in Launch Character function. The biggest difference is a function to calculate the strength (and stamina consumption), depending on how long the input has been pressed.
To make the action chargeable, I set it so that when the input action is pressed, the corresponding functionality to check the conditions and calculate the jump is triggered, and the actual Launch function is only triggered when the input is completed or canceled.
Jump Input Action Even called
To calculate the values depending on how long the input has been pressed, I use a Timer Function called constantly while the Jump input is pressed.
Inside the Hold Jump Timer Function
The value that increases with every tick of the function is normalized and used with a float curve that determines the Jump Strength and one that determines the Stamina Consumption. Being curves, they have a specific value for every possible point in time, including a minimum and a maximum.
The multipliers obtained after mapping the values with the corresponding float curves are then used to calculate the launch velocity for either scenario.
Set Long Jump Velocity
When the Jump input is released, the character is going to be launched using the generated information for a Long Jump or a High Jump, depending on whether there is movement input action.
Jump Arc Visualization
Following the Game Design document, I implemented a Jump Trajectory Visualization Arc using a Spline component that gets created depending on the jump’s velocity information calculated during the Hold Jump function.
The Spline Actor is spawned at the character’s location while the jump charge is pressed, passing in the jump velocity as it gets calculated.
Calculating the Spline Trajectory depending on the type of Jump
The jump’s velocity information is used along with the Breaking Factor from the Character Movement’s component and factoring in gravity using a mathematical formula.
Calculate Jump Trajectory Function
Jump Arc Visualization
Feedback
One of the requirements of the design for FOQUES was to provide as little information as possible through a conventional HUD. But being a game in which many components are working behind the scenes and interacting with each other, driving the experience, it is a challenge to convey all the information.
A way I found to provide many of the temporal elements of information when needed is through the use of Post Processing Components / Effects.
To convey the player taking a hit or being at risk of dying, I use a post-processing material that tints the camera's vignette through a scalar parameter that can be accessed through Blueprints on different events, like taking damage or triggering the Starving or Dying by Thirst Countdowns, getting a progressively more intense effect as the player is getting close to Death.
Post Process Material with ScalarParameter to alter the intensity of the tint
Feedback on Kari dying of Thirst, getting progressively more intense
Credits
This project came with the playable character (Kari, the fox), the AI Enemy (Badger), and the AI Prey (Hare), 3D models, textures, and animations. There are also a lot of different mesh models used on the Research Facility section that were included in the base project, and for which I don’t know who to credit.
The concept art used for the Main Menu, Pause Menu, and End Game screens was created by Finlay Forayth.
I took the available 2D drawings and elements provided with the briefs, and modified them using Photoshop to create icons for HUD visualization, like Kari’s face for Insanity state.
The Hunger, Thirst, Stamina, and Hearts icons were created by me in Photoshop, using as a reference The Long Dark developed by Hinterland and games like Cult of the Lamb or The Legend of Zelda series.
To enhance the deliverables and to convey the functionality of elements in the game, I also used previously owned assets from the former Epic Games Marketplace and Fab.
To portray the stones used to create Hideouts, I used assets from the Dreamscape Series package by Polyart Studio available in FAB.
To create the environment using a landscape material with snow, dirt, grass, and ice materials, as well as the rocks and trees, I used assets from the Stylized Viking Village, and the fruit textures, meshes, and materials to represent the berries come from the Stylized Medieval Village, by AleksandrIvanov, available in FAB.
The textures and decals used to represent the Water Ponds are assets from the Stylized Asian Village package by Auriam, available in FAB.
The models used to represent the Forage Spots were acquired for personal use from Quixel Megascans.
Music in order of appearance:
Frame-Drapping by The Grey Room Density & Time (downloaded from YouTube Music Studio)
Red Shift by The Grey Room Density & Time (downloaded from YouTube Music Studio)
Nebula by The Grey Room Density & Time (downloaded from YouTube Music Studio)
Sound effects downloaded for free use from Pixabay.