Caretaker of Maldearg

Caretaker of Maldearg is a isometric thriller game with exploration focused gameplay and a unique visual style. Players must use their cleaning supplies to navigate through the manor and avoid the monster that roams the hallways.
This was a third year group project created by nine students (Assailance Games), for the DES310 Professional Project module of the Games Development and Production course at Abertay University 2024. Our task was to create a game based on a theme that were given at the start of the term. The theme was 'A Twist on the Mundane' and after brainstorming ideas, we landed on creating game where you play as caretaker that uses their cleaning tools to traverse a haunted mansion.
I took on the role of creating the layout of the mansion that player's would explore which was quite an interesting challenge since I hadn't done something like this. I started off by creating a floor plan of the entire mansion so that me and the team can decide on what part the game will take place. I look at maps of other horror games that take place in mansion or similar layouts such as the Resident Evil games to get a good idea of designing the mansion layout. After that, I got to work on creating the layout of the part of the mansion that would be in the vertical slice and had to redesign it multiple times because it was too big and made it difficult for the player move around without getting lost. In the end, we made a layout that addressed the feedback we got from our class and teachers which to a more tighter and engaging experience.
I also took on the secondary role of Audio Designer where I created my own sound effects using my phone recorder and worked with the narrative writer to record voice lines. I had some minor experience with audio design but I was really fun doing something outside my main role and made it so that wasn't stuck doing nothing after I was done making the mansion layout.