Nightmare
2D Adventure & Puzzle Game
Game Concept
Nightmare is a 2D adventure and puzzle game set inside a haunted school.
The player takes control of a teenager experiencing memories from childhood, represented through a distorted and supernatural version of the school environment.
The main objective is to explore the school, collect the necessary items, avoid supernatural threats, and ultimately escape the environment as part of the protagonist's journey to confront and overcome his past trauma.
My Role
Game Designer | Level Designer | Narrative Designer
- Designed gameplay mechanics and player interactions.
- Worked on the level design of the school environment.
- Participated in the creation of the story and narrative structure.
- Helped design some of the enemies and their behaviors.
- Designed ways for the player to avoid supernatural enemies.
- Contributed to the project's overall design and script.
The project was developed by a team of five people, with the work divided according to each member's responsibilities and strengths.
Gameplay
Nightmare focuses on exploration, puzzle solving, item collection, and escaping supernatural threats.
Instead of relying primarily on direct combat, the player often has to understand enemy positioning and find opportunities to move through the environment safely.
Enemy Avoidance
One of the main gameplay interactions involved manipulating enemy positioning. A common strategy was to attract a ghost toward one side of an area, then quickly move around it and continue through the level.
This created situations where the player had to observe the enemy, understand its behavior, and choose the right moment to move rather than simply confronting the threat.
Level Design
The game takes place inside a school environment composed of multiple areas, including floors, corridors, rooms, and locations such as the kitchen.
The environment was designed to support exploration while also creating spaces where supernatural enemies could control the player's movement.
Corridors and different areas of the school helped create situations where the player needed to decide when to move, where to go, and how to get around an enemy without being caught.
Enemies & Trauma Representation
One of the main design challenges was connecting the supernatural enemies to the protagonist's past experiences.
The protagonist had experienced bullying at school, and the ghosts were designed as supernatural representations of the people and experiences associated with that trauma.
Design Goal
The intention was for the enemies to feel like manifestations of the protagonist's fears and memories rather than simply being generic monsters.
The visual and thematic approach was inspired by psychological horror, using supernatural elements to represent internal struggles.
Narrative
The narrative follows a teenager reliving childhood experiences connected to bullying and traumatic memories.
The school acts as both the physical setting and a representation of the protagonist's past.
Dialogue and sound effects were used to reinforce the atmosphere and communicate parts of the experience to the player.
Design Challenge
The biggest design challenge was making the supernatural enemies meaningfully connected to the protagonist's trauma.
Rather than designing enemies only around gameplay functionality, the project required considering how their presence could reinforce the game's themes.
This meant thinking about how the player's encounters with enemies could represent feelings of being chased, trapped, or unable to escape from past experiences.
Playtesting
The game was playtested with classmates during development.
These tests provided an opportunity to observe how other players interacted with the school environment and the game's mechanics.
What I Would Improve Today
If I were revisiting Nightmare today, I would expand the player's interaction with enemies.
The original design focused heavily on avoiding and outmaneuvering the ghosts. I would explore additional ways for players to interact with or overcome enemies while keeping the game's atmosphere and narrative themes intact.
The goal would be to make encounters more varied and engaging while preserving the feeling of vulnerability that fits the psychological horror concept.
Key Takeaway
Nightmare was an important project for exploring how gameplay, level design, and narrative can work together to communicate a character's emotional experience.
The project reinforced my interest in designing gameplay mechanics that are not only functional, but also contribute to the themes and emotions of the experience.