LJ

Overview

Burglar is a VR robbery simulation game with horror elements. As an aspiring thief, you break into homes to liberate as many goodies as possible without getting caught, and try to escape with your freedom (and life)!

During this project I was responsible for UX and UI, and had a secondary role in level design and systems design.

Read about the team

Week 1

Through the first week, the team's focus was on planning and preparing for the upcoming weeks of work. We established set roles for each member of the team and got to work on establishing a well defined vision of art, level and gameplay. Artists started working on concept art, moodboards and testing the VR experience while programmers got started planning out and setting up to start their work in the engine.

Week 2

The second week was spent laying a good portion the groundwork for the game itself. We got to preparing for an early alpha build which would be shown off on the Wednesday during week 3, where we wanted to show some basic gameplay, some art and the general look and feel of the game. I started testing out if my plan for the UI system would work.

Week 3

We designers spent most of the third week planning and elaborating on anything gameplay related. On the art side, we made great progress on lighing and post processing, and our props team kept pumping out amazing looking assets. Though we still had a fair bit of work left, the programming was also making progress. Most of the essentials were at this point done or close to completion. I spent a lot of time in meetings, planning the project and making decisions about gameplay.

Week 4

Week four was all about starting work inside the engine for the design team. Both Melinda and I started working within the actual Unreal project for the first time, and started putting in placeholder assets and quick solutions which would allow us to playtest something closer to the vision of the final game. The theory was that it would make our playtesting more constructive and worthwile. We would continue working with this the following week. I also started implementing the UI clipboard and the save system during this week.

Week 5

The fifth week of the project, our normal work was interrupted by what the school called a business week. Every day, one or more representatives from the games industry came to the school, presented their company and talked to us students. While we were not busy with the business activities, the group continued implementing some of the programming and assets we had completed.

Week 6

Our beta showcase would take place on the Friday this week, so the team kicked into high gear to get the game as far as possible until then. Though we had made good progress, most of it had not yet been implemented into the level and game. This week, we focused alot on implementation and bugfixing. I worked closely with Casper and Felicia to get the UI where I wanted it.

Week 7

We wanted to get most sounds into the game during this week, but sadly we were highly limited in work capacity due to large parts of the group being sick. Thus, I had to push some of my responsibilities away to next week in favour of doing some work on the sounds. We also wanted to have animations implemented this week, but these too were postponed due to excessive sickness. One positive aspect of the week was that we started having more coordinated playtests of the game.

Week 8

For the second to last week of the project, our main focus was to finish anything we needed and to cut anything we weren't going to have time for. We also continued working with sounds in the engine, wanting to get the atmosphere in the house just right. I did a lot of work here and there, doing whatever was most urgent as well as finalizing the settings and saves system.

Week 9

The final week of the project. Of course, our main focus here was to make the game as finished as possible with the time we had left. The feel of the game was dramatically improved during this week. Many of our playtesters found it so scary that they could hardly manage a few minutes within the house.

I am immensely happy with the game and proud of the product that the team was able to produce.