Red Pines

Red Pines is a short atmospheric driven horror experience. Samantha is missing. The search for Samantha has taken Jeremy and Matthew to the hills of Red Pines, located in rural Maryland. Throw caution, overcome your hesitation and find her.

Warning: Graphic Content

setting no boundaries

Design

Red Pines utilises everything I've learned about design during my Game Design studies. Including but not limited to:

- Narrative Design
- Character Design
- Sound Design
- Level Design
- Game loops and mechanics

Art & Animation

Consistency is key to my approach in developing a game. Having an artistic eye, I set out to make sure there is aesthetic consistency throughout Red Pines. I didn't approach any artists to outright work on the art of the game with me, instead taking it upon myself to learn to texture, model and implement art techniques in engine.

The asset meshes I used in Red Pines were mostly obtained through Sketchfab and CGTrader through purchasing or free download however nothing worked as it came, everything required touching up or outright retexturing. To suit the dilapidated theme of the house I would add rust, dirt, mould, desaturation, wither and age. Many of the assets as you can expect for free downloads needed amending, which is where my skills in Maya would help and grow.

Toward the end I asked my friend Jayden Bonner, a talented artist I knew to nail the animation of the monster "The Pale" and bring it to life.

Programming

For the first couple months in development my friend Lochlan McDonald pitched in to help with programming, this was instrumental to building a foundation for Red Pines. After those initial months Lochlan moved on to his own projects and I took it on myself to program the rest of the game.

From Vision To Product

From the very start of the project I knew exactly what I wanted from Red Pines. As I developed the game it revealed to me what it needed to reach a level of quality I would be satisfied with. The alpha build took a day, the beta took two weeks, then after that I set out on the mountainous task of meticulously polishing out every aspect that I thought was reducing the Red Pines experience.

Red Pines used the Standard Render Pipeline in Unity until beta, then switched to the High Definition Render Pipeline. After three name changes Red Pines inspired the newly created brand name "mortis."

Below is a preview of how I built the house, behind the house is the grey box and beside the house is a demo house of the asset pack I bought. The house didn't include textured interiors, even though the exteriors were textured I still felt like it needed a rework to suit the fidelity of the scene afterward. After the first draft I asked my cousin, a carpenter, to review my build to which he offered reiterations.

creating a horror

Designing The World of Red Pines

The technical realm of video game creation is important, there's no debate there. It is, however, easy to neglect why you're building a game when you're so caught up on how you're going to make it.

From a very early point I knew how I wanted Red Pines to play and how I wanted the player to feel in this world. Once you know the why, the how follows suit. I wanted to create a visually striking environment with a mystery that beckons the player to want to know more, driving them to unlock the house, to follow the clues, to find Samantha.

To achieve a result in which my players would feel motivated to unravel Red Pines secrets, I used the enigma of the unknown. The game is dark, it's not obvious where you're meant to go. To players like myself if the world looks as though the developers have really taken their time to make their game presentable, and lead with and interesting story I'll give just about anything a go.

While I certainly don't wish I didn't develop this game my only regret is that I didn't have as much time to really hone in on the gameplay aspects of Red Pines. When I'm free of being responsible for art, programming, sound and animation I would like to see really how far I can take concepts, stories and gameplay systems. A goal for the future.