Abyssal Lament

Created as a vertical slice by a nine person team in the span of four months for a game production class at UCF in Spring 2021, Abyssal Lament is a sonic scavenger hunt made in Unity. Players must listen and find the correct tones while navigating an unnatural underwater world.

Working with the Design and Art teams, I contributed to several aspects of the creation of Abyssal Lament.

QA

As the primary QA person, I performed extensive bug and optimization testing.

To help organize QA issues I created a Google sheet that tracked the status of issues, who was working on them, what priority they were, along with other variables.

In addition to this, I also created several video logs to share my findings with the team. As an example, here are the first and second tests playthroughs I did to track the FPS.

Production

I assisted the team leads and overall team leader with various aspects of production. This included creating game design documents, note taking, tracking progress, editing presentations, tracking hours, and file management using Google Drive.

Game Economies

I created several game economies using Google Sheets to help our team tackle balance issues before features were implemented in engine. The game economies I developed helped us refine enemy AI, optimize spawn rates, determine game world and asset sizing, and balance player abilities. The game economies I created can be viewed here.

UX & UI Design

As head of UX & UI design, I spent extensive time researching how to give players the best experience possible. Due to the nature of the game, I gave special attention to providing players with auditory and visual feedback that was effective and complimented the game’s aesthetic.

Research

Abyssal Lament takes much of its inspiration from Lovecraftian mythos and deep sea life. Along with research, I created concept art, mood and reference boards, and possible level layouts using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illistrator.

Textures

In addition to my roles on the Design team, I also assisted Art. Along with making custom textures, I also worked on UVing, optimizing, and texturing some of the models. This work was highlighted in one of my blog posts.

Model by Ashley Leandres
Model by Austin Martin
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