Mind Prison - Walking Simulator Game
Mind Prison is a conceptual walking simulation game that is derived from the metaphorical representation of being stuck inside the boxes in our minds. It is designed to be an interactive environmental storytelling experience inside different spaces of one’s mind and a journey of confronting the elements that occupy it.
Story Progression
The story is structured around having 3 main rooms representing the human mind, each designed with the inspiration of different aspects of one’s psyche: the subconscious, the conscious, and the superconscious (3rd room not available in the Demo Version).
As the player starts inside their subconscious, the aim is to try and find a way out of the room by interacting with the space and reaching the next step of the game.
Making of Mind Prison Inside Unreal Engine 5
The ideation process of Mind Prison began with the aim of creating a single-player game with minimum amount of backstory and game mechanics relying only on Environmental Storytelling. The game engages the player with their surroundings and attempts to convey the information solely through these elements while the player tries to discover where they are and how to get out for the story progression.
Lighting is an important element of the Environmental design in the game to contribute to the atmosphere and storytelling by setting the mood and reflecting the aspects of the mind.
Room 1 - Inspired by the Subconscious Mind
The lighting inside the Room 1 is dark and somber. It makes it difficult for the player to understand the surroundings in the first gaze. The eye level of the room and the upside towards the ceiling carries differences. In the eye level, the player sees a stuffy dark space with warm and scarce lighting resembling a storage space, containing elements of the past used objects. As the player tries to understand what they are due to the dim lighting, they realize that what is stored are intangible, abstract notions about oneself, such as memories or thoughts that once occupied their mind.
As they look up towards the ceiling, they are faced with a distorted sense of reality contrasting the floor level with the use of mirrors and reflections, cold tones in lighting, and floating elements beyond reach that reflect the lack of gravity, eerie dreamlike state, and underwater feeling.
Room 2 - Inspired by The Conscious Mind
The lighting inside Room 2 is designed to make the space as airy, grand, and "real" as possible. Here there is no dreamlike lighting, the contrary, sunlight is the biggest element used inside the architecture, along with detail natural lighting.
The space is designed as a reflection of one's ego with the use of a big space, seeming to be very clean and out there (contrasting the previous environment), made from unyielding elements like metal and concrete. The modernist architecture looks impressive yet, at the same time the room bears resemblances to a prison.
Room 3 - Inspired by Superconscious Mind (Currently Under Development)
The lighting characteristics of Room 3 is designed to be very otherworldly, very saturated with high levels of brightness and emissive assets. Some of these assets will be used as elements of lighting as well such as alienesque plant-like organisms inside the environment. Elements of an other worldly nature representing a collectiveness inside the room is key with asset and light design.
