Winter's Hunger

Lead Area Designer | Narrative Design | Blueprint Scripting

Team: 6 • Duration: 2 semesters • Project: Capstone (Unreal Engine 5)

Gameplay from Winter’s Hunger

Project Overview

Winter's Hunger is a first-person psychological horror game developed in Unreal Engine 5, built around the creeping dread of isolation, the mythos of the Wendigo, and immersive survival design. The game blends free-roam area exploration, sanity mechanics, dynamic flashlight systems, and puzzle-solving, all tuned to sustain fear, disorientation, and player agency through experiential spatial design.

My Role & Contributions

As Lead Area Designer, I created and iterated on level layouts and implemented core gameplay systems for Winter's Hunger, ensuring that every spatial choice served the tone of creeping dread. My work focused on area design, narrative design through environmental storytelling, combat encounters, NPC interactions, and quest scripting, all developed in Unreal Engine 5 using Blueprint.

  • Area Layout & Level Design: Created and iterated on area layouts and initial blockouts directly within the Unreal editor. Designed spatially-driven horror encounters using geometry, lighting, and choke points to control player pacing and reinforce narrative tension through composition. Architected level areas that tell stories through spatial design and environmental storytelling.
  • Narrative Design: Designed narrative beats and story progression through spatial layout, environmental storytelling, and systemic interactions rather than dialogue. Crafted environmental narratives that guide players through areas, using level geometry, prop placement, and spatial sequencing to convey story and build tension.
  • Gameplay Implementation: Implemented gameplay for combat encounters, NPC conversation systems, quest scripting, and core mechanics using Unreal's Blueprint visual scripting system. Designed modular sanity meter and dynamic flashlight systems that directly impacted threat aggression and psychological states.
  • Enemy AI & Combat Systems: Built behavior trees for the Wendigo's stalking and reactive hunting patterns. Implemented light-aversion logic and trigger-based ambush sequences linked to specific level volume logic and player position checks.
  • Quest Scripting & Puzzle Design: Developed multi-phase quest sequences and puzzles where each solution carries systemic consequences. Scripted branching quest logic using Blueprint, managing progression states, failure conditions, and player choice consequences. Designed puzzles as spatial challenges embedded in the environment, using trigger volume logic and scripting to manage progression and failure states. Integrated narrative beats into puzzle solutions, ensuring spatial challenges reinforce story progression.
  • Cross-Disciplinary Communication: Collaborated closely with environment artists, narrative designers, and programmers to align experiential design goals with environmental storytelling and AI behaviors. Conveyed layout goals via editor blockouts and top-down documentation; led weekly syncs, coordinated asset handoffs, and adjusted pacing based on playtest feedback. Communicated design goals and concepts across disciplines to ensure area design, narrative beats, and gameplay systems remained aligned.
  • UX Feedback & Polish: Tuned audio-visual feedback for sanity drops, puzzle failures, and enemy proximity. This included heartbeat audio layers, shader-based vignette effects, and Unreal camera shake scripts.

Across the project, I documented all systems in our Game Design Document, leading area vision, narrative design through spatial layout, puzzle implementation, mechanic balancing, and cross-discipline collaboration.

Area & Experiential Design Philosophy

Winter's Hunger explores horror through spatial and mechanical design, not just aesthetics. As the Area Designer, I architected level areas that integrate directly with survival systems, AI logic, and resource scarcity. Each level area acts as a cohesive setpiece, with layout and geometry designed to control the player's line of sight and pacing, creating natural tension ramps, a core component of experiential design.

My designs relied on modular scripting, trigger volume logic, and systemic consequence modeling embedded in specific spatial zones. Players interact with puzzles that have multiple solutions, often trading one risk for another. For example:

  • Frozen Corpse Puzzle: Break a frozen hand with brute force (alerting the Wendigo later) or sacrifice fuel to melt it (costing warmth). This choice is spatially contextualized within a high-tension area; both solutions are valid, and each impacts downstream systems.
  • Blood in the Snow: Environmental storytelling and symbol-based deduction guide the player through a branching cave system layout with multiple narrative paths. One path punishes failure not with death, but a lasting psychological mechanic (auditory hallucinations), demonstrating how branching spatial narratives create meaningful player choice and consequence.
  • Silent Feast: A "ghost logic" puzzle that uses player assumptions about survival to lure them into a trap, solved by player behavior in a specific room's zone tied to systemic inventory sacrifice.

These puzzles are not "locked doors", they are reactive micro-narratives embedded in the level geometry. Success or failure reshapes not only the moment, but the systems that follow: ambient horror, survival mechanics, and even AI behavior. I approached each design with an emphasis on narrative embodiment through systems and spatial layout, ensuring every area tells a story players feel, not just read.

Technical Skills & Communication

This project demonstrated my proficiency with Unreal Engine 5, including Blueprint visual scripting, level editor workflows, and trigger volume systems. I developed strong documentation practices, creating top-down layout diagrams and editor blockouts to communicate design intent across disciplines. My experience with role-playing games informed the systemic approach to area design, where player choices create meaningful consequences throughout the experience. These principles translate directly to RPG area design, quest scripting, and branching narrative implementation.

Results & Impact

Winter's Hunger was developed across two semesters as our senior capstone. My contributions ensured that area design, narrative design through spatial storytelling, tension, and gameplay were tightly interwoven. The project demonstrated my ability to prototype mechanics in Blueprint, create functional level blockouts, develop system-driven horror pacing, and document workflows in a professional format. This title solidified my strengths in area design, narrative design through environmental storytelling, puzzle design, scripting, experiential level design, and leading design teams through complexity and iteration.

What I Learned

I deepened my systems thinking for adventure gameplay and pacing, learning how sanity, lighting, and resource mechanics interplay with space. I refined area design habits for readability and reuse, and strengthened cross-discipline communication to keep mood, mechanics, and layout aligned under tight milestones.