Entrance is a “game prototype” that proposes a new take on the concepts presented by Tarkovsky in his movie Stalker (1982), which in turn is based on the Scifi novel “Roadside Picnic” by the Strugatski brothers. The work tries to leverage the more reflexive aspects of the cinematic re-imagination as well as to maintain the original Scifi spirit that characterized the original source.
The atmosphere is grim and foggy and the lighting covers everything in a bluish tone that speaks of the melancholy that floods the world as the rain falls, slowly but inexorably. The environment is composed of a wetland terrain and a multitude of rocks that create the boundaries of the map while serving as the backdrop in which the experience unfolds.
The natural landscape contrasts with the few man-made objects, mainly of military origin, abandoned to the whims of destiny by their owners whose whereabouts are unknown. A small cemetery suggests the worst, but also asks new questions: How have they died? What happened to the last survivors that buried them before disappearing?
The tanks and cannons that once guarded the entrance are now submerged in water or buried in the wetland’s treacherous ground. Not even violence and war have survived the pass of time and now its rusty carcass serves as a reminder of the insignificance of human strive for power.
An ominous wall protects the entrance to the unknown. Two watchtowers at each side of a giant iron door can be seen through the mist, which they cut with their reflector, highlighting the gloomy environment below and guiding the player from afar. For this, I used the one spotlight for each due to the way in which they project the light being the most similar to a reflector. On the top of the towers there is an antenna topped by a red light (made with a point light and an emissive material) How long have its lights been turned on? With whom they are communicating? Nobody knows. They stand firmly on the horizon like old day statues, waiting for someone, or something to arrive.
Creating the experience was a challenge because this is my first time with Unreal Engine 5 (or with any game engine whatsoever). I was more accustomed to developing everything by hand, and having so many tools at my disposal to customize it was both a blessing and a curse due to the associate learning curve. Nonetheless, I found that using them enabled me to focus on the narrative component which in my previous projects was always relegated due to the technical complexity of the endeavor.
Most of the 3D models were made by me, with the exception of a few props that were downloaded from Sketchfab at the last moment. This is due to my intention of creating something entirely original whose art adapts to a preconceived storytelling and aesthetic. This allows a higher degree of customization and enables me to save time I would have destined to “negotiate” with the available stock of free assets which sometimes constrains the creative effort (although sometimes is positive too). The tanks and the cannons are similar to those used by Tarkovsky in his movie, all well-known soviet vehicles, and weapons.
Creating this first experience in UE5 was a lot of fun and I feel there is a lot yet to be explored. Contrary to most of my projects didn’t write one line of code, due to narrative-focus of this first deliverable but I would love to start experimenting with the Blueprints to generate a few game mechanics as part of a player progression system. The environment which is static for the moment could become reactive to the player’s actions and story progression, feeling more alive overall (It would be interesting for the player to be able to interact with small objects like notes or switches and see how new doors and paths unlock before him as strange sounds start to play).
For the moment Entrance presents more questions than answers, and there are a lot of small bugs to fix. If the feedback from the team is positive then we may consider continuing it as a final project, expanding the narrative through new sounds and texts (what do the notes that can be found along the map say?) to expand the storytelling as well as a few game mechanics to create some kind of player progression.
Download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c3tx09N9y5Y6qmCFFx5kaeeZ-KKbXGuw/view?usp=sharing