Area 12: Garage
First Person Tactical Shooter with Cosmic Horror Elements
Playable in Singleplayer or Coop
Created as a Senior Level Designer for Affray Interactive
Available on Steam, PC
Developed over 2+ Months
Unreal Engine 4
Small Team
5 minute runtime
This Level appears as part of the First Chapter of the Campaign
After working your way through the outermost parts of Area 12, your team comes across a dilapidated Parking Garage with the promise of entry into Area 12 proper. Can you survive and make it inside?
Level Flow
(1) Enter the Garage
(4) Traverse to Valve and open it to unblock path forward
(2) Interact with the Pump Box
(5) Repeat steps 2-4 three times until way to Lobby is completely cleared
(3) Survive while Pump Box unlocks a Valve
(6) Run to Lobby and defend until Gate closes
Production
One of my duties during the development of the .15 update on SCP: 5K was to design and implement an encounter at the halfway point of our first Campaign level.
I worked with my Lead to create the Garage space, where players would engage in a new type of encounter where they must complete objectives while an everpresent horde of enemies rains on their parade. I wanted to create a space that was atmospheric, but also physical. We settled on a design that incorporated fire that blocks the player’s path forward. The player must disable the flow of gas to the fires so that they’re put out and players can progress. They do this through the use of a central pump box that unlocks gas valves, and the gas valves themselves that actually put out the fires.
The Encounter ended up being really fun to test, a lot of time was spent tweaking spawns, and we were able to button up the encounter with a cool survival moment in the next area that also explained how the players couldn’t backtrack. Very fun.
> SCP: 5K
Pump Box
The Pump Box can be interacted with to “Unlock” the Gas Valves providing Gas to the Fires blocking the Players’ path.
Interacting with the Pump Box starts a countdown that causes an alarm to trigger that attracts enemies. Once the countdown is complete, a randomly selected valve (at the scene’s construction) is chosen to be the next interactable for players to use.
Valves
When a Valve is unlocked and ready to be interacted with, enemies will spawn at random locations around the combat arena. Interacting with the Valve turns off the next fire in the sequence of fire jets blocking the players’ way. It also sends a signal to the Pump Box that the next Valve can be unlocked. Rinse and Repeat.
Defense Moment
Once Players have fully unblocked their path forward, they’re able to proceed and open the Gate leading into the next Level - Reception. Once in Reception, we start a sequence that caves in the ceiling of the Parking Garage and prevents Players from backtracking. While this sequence plays out, we spawn waves of enemies in a last ditch effort to blood gate the player. We filled the area with ammo and weapon pickups and created an environment where kiting enemies is recommended.
