Kessler Syndrome

Immersive slow-burn horror game, with VR support

Summary:

Kessler Syndrome is a first-person immersive horror game I worked on with a small team.

While the team was relatively small, it was still the largest team I had worked as a part of. My chief responsibilities were Narrative Design and Experience Design, although I also contributed heavily to Level Design and in-engine assembly, as well as coordination between disciplines.

I was also brought onboard for this project after the initial concept and base prototype had been created. This was new for me, and it was also the first time I was working on a project where I was not working on designing the core mechanics, and my first major project using Unreal engine. I was able to adapt to the pre-existing team structure, and continue to expand upon the initial idea without disrupting the creative vision and general style.

At some points, issues with team coordination arose during development but I was proactive in pursuing and applying solutions. Communication with others is one of my highest priorities in general, so I was able to work with our producers and discipline leads to make sure that the pipeline was not disrupted and that everyone was aware of the status of all parts of the project.

Kessler Syndrome takes place onboard a dilapidated modern-era space station, where the player takes on the role of a hapless astronaut, now stranded alone on the station after their sole colleague is killed in an accident. They must work to repair the damage and various malfunctions onboard the station, interacting with various machine, tools and objects onboard as they navigate in zero-gravity with six degrees of movement.

When I was brought onboard, my primary responsibility was to add structure and pacing to the game. I established a one-week timeframe in-game, with seven separate days that each had their own set of tasks to accomplish and events that occurred. I kept pacing in mind constantly, as I was also in charge of aiding the artists and sound designers in creating the appropriate tone. I chose to focus on the aspect of DREAD.

In a confined space in orbit where the player is truly alone, I found that a slow-burning sensation of dread with only a couple moments of actual peril or release of tension would be far more effective than more frequent scares. I also designed the various scares to be as subtle as possible, and keeping everything firmly grounded. The end goal was to make it so that whenever something happened onboard the station, the player should not immediately know if it was a threat or not, or even if it was happening in the game's reality.

There were two plot beats that the rest of the team and I agreed on very early on: The death of the other astronaut, the titular Kessler, at the hands of a storm of space junk in the opening scene of the game; and the climactic spacewalk out to his body during the game's final day.

I worked closely with our animator to create the intro cutscene, and to make sure that the floating body of Kessler was a consistently visible motif throughout the rest of the game. Some trickery was used to achieve this effect, such as having the body visible through multiple windows facing completely different directions. This also added to the subtle "hallucinations" the player experiences throughout the game. This also served as build-up to the spacewalk, where the player has to leave the safety of the station and confront the floating motif of death in very similar circumstances to when Kessler perished.

The spacewalk is also in service of another major addition I made to the game. Attached to Kessler's body is the keycard to a mysterious sealed door at a central location within the station that the player will pass by at the start of every day. I designed the station's layout for cinematic effect, with the door bathed in red light at the end of the longest hallway in the station, at the other end of which is the airlock that the player will re-enter from. As for what is inside the sealed room, that's the final mystery of the game that I added that raises the stakes and elevates the dread to the next level. You'll have to play the game to see it for yourself.

Steam Page

Reflection:

I am very proud of the work I did on Kessler Syndrome, as I genuinely gave it my all and I believe all of the work I did was of high quality. However, there were myriad issues during development that I feel made the end result less than ideal. Several teammates completely cut communication and did not contribute for extended periods, and some things took dramatically longer than they should have to get done. While I know that I am not at fault for these things, I still regret that I was unable to prevent or fix them.

I felt the effects of the issues quite strongly, as I wound up taking on a lot of the workload that had been abandoned by others. In addition, I had actually worked on designing a lot more content and mechanics in order to add to the experience, but almost all of them were cut due to time constraints as we needed to focus on fixing problems.

Overall, while the end product was flawed, I am very proud of the work I did and how I handled myself during the project. I stepped up to the plate, and developed many skills and gained a lot of experience.