Paranoia Forest

Project Overview

Paranoia Forest is a small game, where players must repair generators and stay alert to the threat of the monster hunting them. A majority of the time building this project was spent working on the monster's behavior and mechanics. The creature tries to stalk the player, intentionally trying to stay behind the player in their blind spot. If seen, the monster will attempt to hide, only screeching and running to the player if it's sure the player has spotted it.

My Role

I built out the environment/locale, the player/monster mechanics and gameplay, the UI/UX, ambience/sound design, and a few interactables such as twigs that would snap and alert the monster to your location. Lastly, I built out the generator mechanic. The player must repair all generators on the map before the exit gate would be powered, and they could leave. Each repaired generator would make the monster more difficult to elude.

Design & Development

I wanted to design the atmosphere to be almost choking. Due to the nature of the monster, the player has no choice but to constantly watch their back. I also designed and implemented a kind of sanity mechanic, where the player would start to have visual and auditory hallucinations of the monster if they stayed in the dark for too long.

Challenges & Outcomes

One of my main focuses was to not repeat the mistake I made in The Iron Crypt. It was a challenge, but for this project I defined a very specific and concise development path.