The Penumbra (VR Stealth Game)

The Penumbra is a Virtual Reality stealth game, set in a fictional world based upon early 20th century noir movement, popularised by Hollywood in the 1940s/50s. The player plays as a Penumbra, an oppressed race, persecuted for their ability to exist in both light and dark within a world ruled by Lumens and shade (Races that exist solely in the light and the shadow respectively). The objective is to escape imprisonment and navigate this dystopian environment uncovering the worlds shadowy past. Ultimately aiming to break the penumbra out of their servitude. To aid the player’s journey they must steal a highly experimental light manipulation device which can force either the Lumen or the Shade out of existence, thus enabling the player to safely traverse their hostile surroundings.

My role in this project is hard to define as it has expanded significantly since the project’s conception, I started the project hoping to stick to my chosen specialism of environment art however as the end of the first term approached it became clear that for this project to succeed, I would need to expand my skillset to cover areas where the team was lacking. For this reason, I stepped into a more organisational and design focused role, assigning tasks, organising meetings, ensuring communication exists between specialisations and ensuring assets were added into engine and functioning correctly. After Christmas I stepped back a little due to internal team disagreements but once these had subsided, I returned to my organisational role whilst also leaning increasingly towards a designer’s role. After multiple crits highlighted serious flaws within the level designs of the game I stepped in and reworked a number of the levels and designed and implemented a tutorial level alongside one of the programmers to resolve issues as the design team were otherwise engaged with other tasks. The entire time I ensured I was fulfilling my primary role of asset creation and environmental design (producing assets, texturing assets, placing assets in scene and lighting scenes)