This week, teacher introduced some experimental opportunities we can explore this semester, so I’m thinking that I might take this chance to push myself and create an FPS shooting game.
Recently, the second season of The Last of Us has been airing, and I really love its art style. The decaying cities are covered by plants, and people embark on a survival journey.
What sets this work apart from other zombie-themed works is that it more realistically reflects a cruel and heartless world. For example, under the rampant spread of cordyceps fungus, the government not only fails to provide shelter to the people but instead takes those who are uninfected in surrounding towns under the pretext of sending them to safety zones, only to kill and cremate them in the wilderness. The reason is that the higher-ups believe that if these people die, they won’t be infected in the future, which would reduce their workload.
After the outbreak, other survivors desperately scavenge for resources in order to live. Some even use lies to lure others in, only to kill them and steal their supplies when they least expect it. In that world, humans seem to have become even more terrifying than the zombies.
Inspired by this, I want to make a zombie FPS game. However, I need to think about how to make it and what the protagonist’s purpose in the game would be.
So, I’ve been researching the art design of The Last of Us to get some inspiration：
We can see that most of the city scenes are open and spacious, while enclosed areas usually feature a focal point that draws the player’s attention, along with strong lighting contrasts to guide them in the right direction. Since I’ve never tried designing game levels before, I don’t really have a clear idea of where to start.
I’ve built a game level in Unreal Engine where the player can move back and forth. The layout is shaped like a “U”. The player spawns underneath a collapsed overpass and needs to find the correct path by navigating through the wreckage and abandoned cars. Along the way, zombies will appear to challenge the player.
In terms of gameplay expectations, the player can see their destination—an area filled with tall buildings—in the distance from the overpass. This visual cue encourages the player to explore and figure out how to reach that location. When the player discovers a way to climb the collapsed structure and get onto the overpass, they gain the opportunity to observe their surroundings from a higher vantage point.
The first area is designed like an isolated island, so the player needs to traverse vehicles and the overpass to reach the second section. I want the player to do more than just stand in one place shooting zombies—I want them to actively explore the city, using collapsed structures and debris to discover new paths and move from one location to the next.
The second area the player reach is partially submerged in water, so they have to move forward by stepping on sunken cars. If the player falls into the water, they will die.
I referenced this picture:
Then, while building the level, I imported Unreal Engine’s first-person shooter template to test it. Through testing, I discovered that there are some issues with the scene.
For example, the player needs a strong motivation to explore the map and receive positive feedback—but figuring out how to design that feedback loop is quite challenging.
The second issue is that the scene is too open and expansive, which results in endless skylines in the distance. If I were to build out all the surrounding buildings, it would require a massive amount of work.
A massive map would make the entire gameplay flow more complex. So I think I need to find an alternative approach, even though I’m quite reluctant to let go of this level.
Find Plan 2:
How can a zombie shooting game remain engaging when the scene is smaller in scale? How can I make the decaying environment more interesting?
I was reminded of Escape Room, where the protagonist is tricked by a company—thinking they were just joining a regular escape room game, only to realize that failure means death. So I started wondering if I could incorporate something similar into my game.
For example, the protagonist could also be participating in what they believe is a live-action immersive experience, but it turns out they’ve been deceived and thrown into a zombie-filled environment. They must outsmart the zombies and gather materials to repair the safehouse door lock in order to escape. Meanwhile, everything is being livestreamed by the company for profit. When the protagonist defeats a zombie, viewer reactions and comments would pop up in the bottom left corner of the screen, showing the audience’s responses in real time.
However, although this idea is quite diverse, it would be difficult to implement. For example, how to write the blueprint for delivering items（like find, pick tool to fix the safe door), and how to design a real-time feedback system in the bottom left corner similar to a live stream. I searched online for tutorials but couldn’t find much to reference, so I need alternative solutions.
Find Plan 3:
I thought I could continue my game design based on some tasks I completed last semester. In our group project last semester, we designed a dungeon short film, but due to some factors, the entire scene turned out quite dark, and my model didn’t look great in the scene. So, I thought I could design my own dungeon game, using the gargoyle as one of the enemies.
I tried using Mixamo’s animation library and motion mapping to implement actions like attack, chase, idle, knockdown, and hit reactions. However, I still need to adjust the animation blending and manually keyframe the wing animations：
This way, I can apply the model assets I previously created to design a game, which I think will be quite meaningful.
So, I plan to create a first-person, single-player game set in a dungeon. The protagonist is a member of a mysterious organization, sent to investigate supernatural occurrences and deal with the roaming monsters. The story’s opening is somewhat similar to the beginning of Resident Evil, where the protagonist goes to a strange village or eerie mansion to investigate and ends up killing the leader inside.
Although the game might not have deep spiritual themes or messages, I want to learn how to write blueprints and the process of creating game enemies, and I believe I will gain a lot from it.
Art style
In terms of art style, I suddenly thought of a game I played back in my primary school: Dark Meadow: The Pact，which was developed by Phosphor Games Studio based in Chicago, was built using the Unreal Engine 3 and was first released on the iOS platform (iPhone and iPad) on October 5, 2011.
The player wakes up in an abandoned hospital, having lost all memories of the past.
The only “guidance” comes from a man speaking through a loudspeaker. He claims he was once trapped here as well and tells you that the only way to escape this nightmare is to kill a being known as The Witch.
As the player battles monsters in the hallways, gains experience, and ascends to higher floors, the story unfolds—eventually revealing that The Witch is, in fact, the player’s own daughter.
Game Plan:
So, I wrote down all my game ideas to make sure I won’t forget them later. I’m planning to create two maps: the first one is a forest map on the surface, and the second is a dungeon map. I hope I’ll have enough time to finish both of them：