About
There is a Ghost in the System is an arcade-style maze game with a twist – enemies can move through walls and you have to use your teleport ability to escape!
This game was originally created during my studies at the university of Würzburg for the Gamelab I module.
It even got nominated for Gamelab I’s Game of the Year!

You can download the most recent build of the game here: https://ninjapigeonproduction.itch.io/there-is-a-ghost-in-the-system

Why a maze game?
The idea of the game started with the teleportation mechanic. From there, I asked myself what kind of environment such a mechanic would make sense in, and would be feasable to create on my own within the time constraints of the Gamelab I module.
With maze games, part of the fun comes from solving the maze itself, almost like a puzzle. Adding a teleportation mechanic on top of the intrinsic fun of mazes seemed like a fun addition and unique way to solve said maze. It was also a simple enough concept for the time I was given, while still offering the possiblity of being added to.

Pepper
The player character, Pepper, was created from scratch in Blender. As he was the first 3D Model I ever made, I knew I had to keep his design simple. Texturing was done initially in Blender, and cleaned up in Krita.
Rigging and animations were also done in Blender.
Later on, I also created a control Rig for him in Unreal Engine, to animate the little scene in the main menu.

Custom Vision System
I implemented a simple vision system for the enemies using line traces, as Unreal’s built-in vision system prove to not be reliable enough.
It is implemented as a Blueprint Component that can simply be added to the different enemy types. It checks if the would have direct line of site or if it would be blocked. If direct line of sight is given and the player is close enough for the enemy to see them, the perception system notifies the enemy it is attached to and the enemy initiates its chasing behaviour.

Sparkle Shader

During the game, there sometimes are simple missions that task the player with collecting three items. While playtesting some players suggested that these items should be highlighter for easier visibilty.

I created this sparkle shader for that reason.

Twinkling Stars

A simple, tileable shader for background decoration. The “stars” are RGB dots, each channel gets multiplied by a modified sinus for the twinkle animation. The result is used as the alpha for a lerp to switch the stars on and off.