Lab:Rat - Showcase

Introduction

Lab:Rat is a first person 3D puzzle game where you find yourself in a room and need to find a button to be able to open a door that will lead you out of said room. You play as someone who just recently woke up in this mysterious building. You need to find your way out and maybe unwrap what building you found yourself locked in. Some puzzles will have the player figure out a specific pattern that they need to solve to be able to escape. This took about 4-5 weeks to get a prototype out and is something I could work on more in the future.

This was a challenge for me as for this project I wanted to work in Unreal Engine 5 which in turn meant I had to work with blueprints. That was something at this time I wasn't too familiar with. However UE5 is great with giving you assets to help you get started.

First and foremost was to make the character controller. The player is able to do basic moves such as jumping and crouching. They are able to shoot a weapon and grab objects. The character controller that came with the UE5 project could already jump and shoot. I had to add crouching and grabbing myself along with a health system and health bar UI. These things were fun and helped with developing the puzzles later.

Since the player had to find buttons and codes to open the doors, fixing blueprints for the doors was a bit tricky so that they could work individualy. With the basics it was now time for me to actually build the levels.

What was the feeling of the levels?

The project began as a top down stealth puzzle game. This idea was short lived as I felt it wouldn't fully showcase the feeling I wanted to give the player. I wanted the "Portal" (2007) feeling of walking around and finding out the answer. And in a first person perspective I could make it fun. Not that I now think a top down view would necessarily be worse for this type of game. But for the project I wanted to make, it suited the game better with first person.

The images below was early inspiration, begining with a top down view and then to a 2D view. I had enemies in mind for this project but that was scrapped in favour for something else that I will get to later.

Here is the visual inspirations that helped when I decided to make the game 3D and first person.

The Game

The game ended up with a total of 10 Rooms. Some labeled with numbers and others with letters. Below are the 3 first rooms.

The Turret

Originally in this room I wanted a big parkour section, this was later repurposed for another room. I had this idea that the player had to use their gun to break a roof in one section so they could traverse a big hole. I had in mind that the roof would collapse and so on. Then I started to think about fail conditions. The player was breezing through the game at this point and if the only obstacle would be falling down and dying. It could be a bit boring. So I searched around a bit and I came up with a turret placed in the level. Now, the turret was tricky to make work as it was something I haven't coded before. I have made enemies but not enemies that would work like this turret. 

The turret does come back again in a different room, however I wish to have made it better as I found that room being lackluster. But here it was a nice introduction of agency to the player. And I was proud that I could make it work that and with the health UI working as it should.

The final Rooms

The final stretch of the level is a big room with multiple doors and multiple buttons. Here the player chooses whichever door they want to begin with as the only goal is to have pressed enough buttons to open the final door that leads somewhere, perhaps freedom? Or the next stage of the game.

Map Overviews and Flow Maps

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