Life Before Death
What is Life Before Death:
An immersive puzzle game using Unreal Engine where you play as John: a man who wakes up in an empty but moving train as he finds clues to uncover his mysterious past, journeys to vast wonders, and attempts to find his missing daughter in Life Before Death.
Development of Life Before Death:
Life Before Death is a Video Game Development project that was created for ICS-485 at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa (Video Game Design and Development Class) for Spring 2024. Development of Life Before Death started February 18, 2024 and is still currently in development. The current development team consists of Liam (Kula) Van Asperen, Benjamin Crawford, and myself, Kevin Clarkin. For our final assignment for the class project our team had to make a fully playable video game by the end of the semester with a team consisting of students from the class. Before Life Before Death became a first person puzzle mystery game, there were many different ideas from the team on what the group game development project should be. My idea was to create a videogame with a cyborg ninja running on clouds to stop a mega corporation from taking over the world, while Kula’s was a game where you journey down into the depths of an ancient alien castle buried beneath the earth. Although each of the team members liked all of the ideas presented to each other, the idea to go for something more manageable in scale made more sense due to the 2 month deadline. Ben Crawford suggested the horror game route to the team with a scary subway train game demo he had made with Unreal Engine 5 and since the consensus was to use Unreal Engine 5 as the game engine of choice for the team, it made sense to go this route.
My Contributions to Life Before Death:
For Life Before Death, I worked primarily in programming puzzles and the inventory system of the game, with the inventory system, even despite the puzzles programming, being a more monumental task. I also contributed to cutscene assets and in game story assets contributing to the lore of the world and utilizing model posing in Unreal Engine. Working on the game was a great honor and experience with my team.
Screenshots:
Website: Life Before Death