Maurizio Fischetti

Trauma Overview

This was the final group project of the Digital Bros Game Academy course. With the Exception of the 3D Assets, The game was developed entirely in Unreal Engine 5 and entirely with blueprints.

From the GDD:

"Trauma is a 3D Single Player First Person Survival-Horror game, set inside the memories of Brian, a person that after a terrible accident falls into a coma.
In this deep coma, the player will need to retrace Brian’s memories, uncovering his fears and most importantly his hidden traumas. These traumas will be represented as monsters that will try to overcome Brian’s mind, hunting him down in otherworldly ways.
Trauma's goal is to immerse the player in a dangerous world, where exploration is essential to survive, with realistic graphics and a decadent and dark mood. The game mixes survival and horror genres elements, thanks to the maintenance of parameters and gathering useful resources to survive into the game and creepy elements like the environment and the enemies, targeting dedicated survival horror fans ranging from 18 to 30 years old."

Video: Trauma Official Trailer

My Work

As a Project Manager

assign daily/weekly tasks;
organizing team meeting;
fixing Project milestones/deadlines;
Keeping track on everything related with the project with Documentation and Milanote App.

As a Programmer

Game Systems and Gameplay

Settings: Key bindings, video and audio settings.
Save system: Saving and loading the game. The game will manage the load when the game istance is initialize, it will know if it's the first time the player plays the game (no save files -> no continue button in main menu), if not (save file exists -> continue in main menu) the player can load the game. The player can also Save the game in the diary. The player can also choose to start a New Game and the system will ask if it's ok to delete the old save file (the game does not provide a multi slot savefile).
Inspection, pickupables and Interactables: All the Pickups are in a Data Table with their custom icon and properties, they have an interface that player can interact and pickup them. The interactables are object that cannot be pickedup but can behave in some way, also they can be part of a puzzle with the puzzle system. The inspect can occur to important objects that the player cannot pickup, but can analyse to find some clue or hint to know what to do. Its composed in two main parts: view (for analyzing an object) and Read (read the notes). (for example there is a puzzle to open a safe needing the combination that is hidden under multiple object, the player can inspect and rotate to find the number under these objects).
Actors: Flashlights, Memento, batteries, Memento keys, keys, doors and each behaviours. They behave as expected from this object in real world, memento is a carillon. A particular attention was put in the flashlight, you can see the light flickering and with less intensity as the battery charge goes down.
Puzzle system: The puzzles system work with a component. Each Actor designed to be part of a puzzle have this component that is fully customizable inside the inspector. The Component will manage all the logic of the puzzles itself, and then will comunicate with the Actor's interface (Interactive) to do it's action if the conditions are met. I've prepared some standard condition to the puzzles (Player has item in inventory, Player interacted with one or more object first, player interacted in a correct sequence with some other actors first, player completed a puzzle first). The puzzles can be linked, providing a 'chain' of puzzles and unlockables.
Scripted Sequences: The first encounter with the 'Trauma' and the Demo ending one.
Mental Health: The player Mental is divided in two main parts: The dread and the Sanity. The dread increase slowly in the dark and can recover in the light, when it reaches the maximum, the sanity will start to decrease,

The entire game programming was made with BluePrints.

UI/HUD

Main Menu: the main menu it's a 3d scene and its designed by me, navigating the windows of the menu like New Game / Continue, Video settings, audio settings, Controls and About, will move the camera accordingly to the specific object the current settigs is about.
Pause Menu and GameOver: The game will pause and show the buttons to reload the previous save or exit.
Inventory: The inventory will be filled up with the pickapables items (Prototyped in a Data Table). In the inventory the player can read the description of an object, use the object or order them. The icons and the number will be updated each time the object update. Objects contains also a stack capacity, meaning that designers can choose if a particular object will occupy more slots or not in the inventory.
Diary: In the diary the player can Save the game and read it's progress and lore according to the puzzle he has solved. Each puzzles send to the diary their custom Lore once they are completed. The diary its an actor in the world and can be opened via interaction. Then the camera will move from the player to the diary itself, and back to the player when leaves.
Tutorial Hints: Work with keybinding, contestual to the action, tutorial hints will appear on the top left corner with an animation and a sound effect. its composed in three parts: Contestual Icon, Contestual Key/Title, contesual description. Based on the situation.
Player HUD: The player Hud will update when something changes in the player data. it's composed with 2 main part. The first one is the Mental Health and Dread Level. The second one is the equipped item that will change according to the current item equipped (if one) and its resource.