Vis À Vis
Vis À Vis is a 3D first-person atmospheric horror game. It was built for Extra Credits Game Jam #4, held in June 2019. The player has to escape the world of mirrors they find themselves trapped in.
The game was built using Unreal Engine 4 and written in C++ and Blueprints. I worked in a team of four on this, as a gameplay programmer. I was responsible for most of the other programming related functionalities, such as the UI, as well.
The game can be found at dr4g0nsoul.itch.io/vis-vis, and here’s a gameplay sample:
Following are some of my thoughts on the overall experience of developing the app. If you prefer to not read the rest of the post, you can go back to the portfolio home by clicking here.
Background
A fairly well-known video games-related YouTube channel Extra Credits was hosting a game jam, so I teamed up with a few friends and decided to participate.
I had wanted to work with Unreal Engine 4 for a while since I felt like I had gotten enough experience with Unity and C# to try something new. I also wanted more C++ experience since I hadn’t worked with it in a long time, even though it was the first programming language I ever learned.
Development Process
We had many ideas in mind, with the theme “Connect” being very open-ended. But we wanted to go for a horror theme since we hadn’t delved into that genre before, and horror games seemed to do very well on itch.io. So, we eventually decided on the theme of a parallel world with both worlds being “connected” through mirrors. I quite liked the idea, and developing it was a lot of fun.
Final Thoughts. What did I learn?
Working with Unreal Engine for the first time took a decent amount of effort. Since I was the only programmer on the team, I had to learn the API and discover new libraries as I went. I learnt quite a lot about Unreal Engine, even though working with C++ after a long time was difficult.
I implemented some functionality that didn’t get used, such as a whole inventory system. This was primarily due to us changing up the design of the game during the middle of the jam since we had to rethink our scope. But regardless, it was a good learning experience.
I already talked about how I learned to work with Unreal Engine, but the most unexpected thing was how powerful Blueprints can be. I initially wanted to implement most of the game in C++. Still, I soon realised that implementing the base in C++ and expanding it with Blueprints was how most functionalities were implemented in Unreal Engine.
It was also the first big 3D project I had undertaken, and I quite liked how it turned out. Working on a 3D game was also more satisfying than working in 2D. In a way, it felt like I had progressed one step closer to developing big AAA games or big indie games.