Black Mass

Black Mass was a 16 week group project made for our client, Rockstar Games. Our brief was Bad Timing.

Black Mass is a first person horror game, where players must explore an abandoned orphanage in search of their missing friend. The orphanage is haunted and the game features many scares, both subtle and overt. The core mechanic of the game features a vcr camera that shows players things in their environment which are not visible to the naked eye. The game plays with the fear of the unknown and the unseen.

My role on the project was as a technical designer, so I was heavily involved in all aspects of game design. I developed all the animations and implimented and created behaviour trees for both the player and AI entities. I assisted heavily with level design through from original sketches to in engine implimentation. I developed and implimented the sound and audio for the game, including composing original music and Foley sounds for the game. I was heavily involved in the programming of the game and worked hand in glove with our main programmer, who I have become life long friends with. I helped design UI and implimented all interactions in the engine. I was central to the artist pipeline and facilitated all of the assets being added to the project. I was a resource to be used by all other designers and artists to assist them in their work flows, troubleshooting problems and resolving issues as they arose.

This was a very positive group project, where all team members learned a tremendous amount about game design during the process. I formed many strong bonds with team members from this project (I still run D&D sessions for a core group of designers on this project).