In the Chamber

Game Playthrough

In The Chamber Playthrough.mp4

Summary

Contributions:

Core game idea
Lead design
System design
Audio design
Visual scripting
UX design

In the Chamber is a roguelike twin-stick shooter where the player defends a pyramid from looters.

The combat has a twist where the player has magical abilities that wear down the main weapons usability, leading to a unique interplay between the player's main and special attacks.

In the Chamber was draft selected for a Rookie Award 2024.

The Pitch

I pitched In The Chamber as a roguelike where the player can attack with a main weapon and special abilities. The main weapon is a revolver that is reliable and straightforward; the special abilities are game changing powers that break the revolver down, thus limiting its further use.

The core idea for the project was a game where special abilities feel more impactful by coming at the expense of a more mundane weapon, where Neon White was a large inspiration.

I wanted the player to be aware of the cost of using special abilities, and to be in charge of using them when the situation called for the price to be paid.

The game's pace would be slower to give the player time, and the mood and setting were built around that.

The revolver is iconic, intuitive and easy to visualize. I wanted a setting where it fitted but wasn't obvious. I decided on 1920's Egypt, drawing inspiration from the Mummy and Indiana Jones movies, but swapping the perspective to be from an Egyptian instead of an explorer.

A picture from the pitching process showing the Egyptian eye of Horus with a revolver cylinder-pupil. I made it to show the setting, the weapon and the cyclical nature of a roguelike in a single image.

Design Lead

I had a group of talented artists, designers and programmers. I was clear with the ultimate vibe of the game and the feeling we wanted to engender in the player. I then trusted them to reach those goals and I feel that that trust was well placed.

Leading sprints and scrum meetings gave me enough information to know we were on the right track, and seeing my fellow developers reach the goal on their own volition left me with a deeper sense of awe over what we created together.

I was also in charge of creating and maintaining the Game Design Document, which you can read here.

To the left, a standard revolver holding six bullets.

To the right, a bullet has been jammed in the revolver's chamber by the player using the lightning bolt ability.

System Design

I came into the game knowing that it would be solely about combat, and I knew how the regular and special attacks would interact with each other. Focusing on these few parts allowed us to iterate a great deal and build more abilities when we felt that the core was in place.

Our main challenge was to tweak the components so that the game gave the players the experience we wanted. By making the gun reliable but slow, the abilities powerful but costly, and the player not able to take more than a few hits before dying, we gave the player the resources to be a menacing warrior, but frail if the resources are misused.

Another challenge was spicing up minute-to-minute gameplay. We moved end-of-level rewards to instead be dropped by defeated enemies throughout the level to give the player more things to react to. We also implemented a minigame where the player can be rewarded with a cost free special ability to give the player more uses out of their upgrade, but only if they play the game well.

One of the skill trees in In the Chamber. Each base skill has two upgrade paths that radically power the skill up.

Visual Scripting

Much of my time during development was spent visually scripting using Unreal Engine’s blueprints. My process started with writing the mechanic in detail in our G.D.D. (both to give myself a clear goal and to make it easier for developers to collaborate since instructions were as clear as possible). I have always enjoyed logic puzzles and found that I could create many of the abilities and ability upgrades using modules that other developers had created following the G.D.D.

Many of the mechanics I worked on were in collaboration with other developers, but some things that I scripted on my own were a reload system that could be interrupted prematurely, a stamina system that would replenish at different speeds, and a soundtrack that could switch between different versions without skipping a beat.

I also cleaned up the blueprints and gave them more structure, since they were often iterated on which left them chaotic.

Audio Design

During the project we had the pleasure of working with sound producers from Högskolan Dalarna. I got to work with them to make all sound assets for the game, and familiarize myself with their process.

Like with the other developers, I first made it clear what the vibes of the game were meant to be, as well as the place and purpose of each sound.

The sound assets were ready around the same time as I had less on my plate as a systems designer, so it felt natural for me to segue into implementing them into the game. It was not something I had planned on doing but I enjoyed the challenge and the change of pace.

We had two versions of the main gameplay music, one for when the player is in combat and one for when they are not. I created the system for them to seamlessly transition back and forth.

The music needed to swap between two different versions, which I tied to already created game behavior.

1st pic: A combat version starts when the player is first spotted on each level.

2nd pic: A softer version starts when the player is rewarded at the end of a level.

UX Design

I wrote the tutorial and description text for the abilities. While there was some information we wanted the player to intuit for themself, like how the current level hints at what the next level is, everything we did want the player to explicitly know I put in the tutorial.

I made the tutorial clear and concise. Atop the description I put a quote from the pharaoh character, both to give the tutorial some flair and flesh out that character.

A programmer crafted a system for controller feedback. I used it to create simple pulses in the controller whenever the player attacked or took damage.

I also designed more vibrational patterns and haptic feedback for when the special abilities are used. Those feedbacks were stronger and more intricate since the abilities they were used with where stronger than the regular attacks.

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