My original main role after leading the initial concepting phase was to design the monster’s interactions together with our AI specialist. My continuous research throughout the project found that for this system to make sense we’d have to reveal the monster so often that it would ruin the mystery and subsequently, the terror. Instead, we opted for heavily scripted interactions to allow greater control over the narrative.

After making my own position redundant I switched my efforts to focus on the project’s narrative. Horror lives and dies by its ability to build tension and surprise the player, so I started designing a ‘tension curve’ for the project. This curve mapped out all the major and minor events in the game to build and release tension strategically over the course of the narrative. Most of my work on this was at a macro level, as I preferred to leave the minute details and exact execution to our highly competent level and audio designers.