Words in Ruin was a side project I made while at university. It's a short horror game that took me around 3 months to make.

I used it's development to teach myself how to use Unreal Engine.

The game takes inspiration from the Silent Hills Playable Teaser (P.T.), with gameplay revolving around cryptic puzzle solving in an infinitely looping hallway.

The game features a flashlight and battery resource with collectable batteries adding a player facing time pressure to the experience.

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Each loop through the hallway also has it's own time limit. The grandfather clock in the main landing starts at 11:57PM each loop. After three minutes (12:00AM), the lights in the house will go out and additional horror elements will occur.

This paired with the cryptic nature of the puzzles was designed to add pressure to the experience. 

The intent was to keep players focused on puzzle solving, so that when a horror/scare set piece occurred, it would be more effective.

I was responsible for all the level/puzzle design and all the gameplay implementation. However, the assets used were all sourced from online royalty free resources.