[Unity] Survival Horror Critique

Jack M.

Hey everybody of polycount. I'm working on a level that's going to have a survival horror feel to it. I have some grain and vignette that you can see in the picture close to the ground. There is also some detail that is being restricted from view in some areas.

Anyways... I would like some critiquing and feedback from you guys. Anything goes. Whether it's a critique of the level design, lighting, VFX, models, etc. all is helpful. Compliments are nice and make me feel warm inside, but they are of little help. Bashing is also not very helpful. This is a pretty professional website so I have don't have many worries about things like that, but I just wanted to put that out there.

Another extremely helpful thing anyone could help me with is how to get the detail distance in the terrain settings above 250. The performance of the map so far is very good, and I want to increase the limit to get some detail on the mountain sides visible from most points on the map.

Jack M.

Here is two more images.

Kuki

At the moment it is very difficult to give you some feedbacks, everything looks too dark and flat at the same time. I really suggest you to collect some reference pictures, some photograph with the visual feeling you're looking for, and then try to re-create it.

FlynT

Well it's hard to come up with constructive critiques, since the images are all in editor shots rather than shots from the player perspective. For the general lighting i would go more into a bluish direction, it's pretty flat at the moment and doesn't add much atmosphere to your scene. In your case i would have a look at Alan Wake since the setting you're going for is pretty much the same.





You don't have to be a copy-cat and mimic the exact same lighting but you can get inspired by the way they've set up their scenes.

Models are to hard to see to give you a proper judgement on them, some wireframe & flat shaded screenshot of them would be good.


I'm not able to answer your question about how to increase the detail distance, but once again i refer to Alan Wake here. If you have a look at various screenshot of the game you can see that they used the fog pretty wisely for blocking the view of stuff that is far away. Especially in horror games this is a pretty common technique!

One last tip would be more details on the ground layer! Add foliage, random structures like sheds, fence parts, stones, rocks and so forth. I can't tell what way the player will take through the whole forest but consider leading the way of the player with lights, creating horror settings doesn't mean to have no lights! HINT: People get sick if they have to stare all the time on a dark screen. Use fill lights if you don't want to use lamp posts or torches or similar light sources.

Hope it helps at least a bit.

Jack M.

Thanks for the tips. If you have any suggestions for a "flyaround" camera in so I can take in game screenshots, that would be awesome. I will look into it and as I get a little further in the next couple of days I'll post some more screens. I also forgot to enable fog which would help a lot (thanks for the heads up). And you're definitely right about the blue-ish colors. I'm going to be doing some of that in the post process. The lighting isn't quite doing it.