• Genre: First-Person Psychological Horror
• Engine: Unity 2022.3.62f2
• Development Period: July 2024 – Sep 2026
• Role: Multiple: Solo Developer / Designer / Producer / Marketing / Other
• Team Size: Single Person
• Platform: PC / Steam
• Status: Released
• Press Kit: Google Drive Link
• Planning: Miro & Trello
• Tools: Unity, Blender 3D, Figma, GIMP, Canva, Davinci Resolve, Audacity, Visual Studio, Github Desktop

I wanted to communicate these ideas through symbolism and satire. This led to the concept of a solo game developer whose corrupted code begins to haunt him. From that point onward, the game’s design revolved around this central idea, using psychological horror, symbolism, and satire to explore generational and societal issues.

In the following sections, I will explore each stage of the ideation and brainstorming process, explain how the concept evolved, and describe how I arrived at the final creative direction.

This research also helped me establish initial expectations for the game’s performance. I set a target of reaching 3,000 wishlists by release, receiving at least 10 positive reviews, and reaching a wider global audience, with a particular focus on the USA, Europe, and Japan.

By the time of release, the game had reached approximately 750 wishlists. Following release, the total number of wishlists increased to 1,045, while the game reached a total of 19 reviews with a Mostly Positive rating.

I did not reach my initial wishlist target, which I primarily attribute to inefficient advertising and limited social media efforts. However, despite these limitations, I was still able to increase visits and wishlists leading up to release. There was also visible interest in the game on YouTube, with streamers and YouTubers beginning to share gameplay. This was supported by curator outreach, keys sent to content creators, and additional organic growth and interest.

Looking back, the results showed me that the game was able to generate organic interest despite my limited marketing reach, while also highlighting the importance of having a more structured and effective marketing strategy for future projects.

The Narrator is essentially a manifestation of Theo’s psyche. He sounds exhausted by Theo’s process, his mistakes, and what he sees as his bullshit, constantly questioning and criticizing him. At the same time, beneath that frustration, he genuinely cares about Theo and secretly wants him to succeed.

The Narrator does not appear in any physical form. He exists only as a voice inside Theo’s head, creating the impression that Theo is having a continuous conversation with his own thoughts and internal criticism.

Environment Theo’s Apartment: Theo’s apartment is a relatively ordinary flat that he returned to after spending years living abroad. Nothing appears unusual at first, but as the breach events begin to occur, the apartment gradually transforms into a darker and more claustrophobic environment. This transformation reflects Theo’s deteriorating psychological state and the increasing pressure he is experiencing throughout the story.

Environment Air Vents: Air vents provide the player with an alternative and more convenient route through certain rooms, allowing them to bypass obstacles or access areas that may otherwise be difficult to reach. At the same time, they represent the suffocation and claustrophobia Theo experiences as he becomes increasingly isolated in his apartment and spends long periods continuously working on his project. The vents therefore serve both a practical and symbolic purpose. They are also incorporated into puzzles and lore exploration, giving the player another way to discover and interact with the environment.

Environment Apartment 002: After Theo manages to escape his apartment, the only place he can enter is the neighboring Apartment 002. Originally, as I expanded the game, I planned to create a five-floor apartment building, with each apartment introducing different themes and stories related to Theo. However, as the project grew beyond its original scope, I had to rescale the game and reconsider this approach.

Apartment 002 therefore became an opportunity for me to gain more experience with environmental storytelling while still maintaining relevance to the game’s broader themes. Unlike Theo’s apartment, this room is not directly connected to his personal experiences. Instead, it serves as a satirical commentary on societal struggles and the psychological effects that can emerge within households living under a broken and dysfunctional system.

Environment Hallway in a Void: The Hallway in the Void is introduced in Part 2 and consists of a long, surreal hallway with doors leading to specific rooms that reveal different parts of Theo’s past. Each room contains an item that must be collected and delivered to the Hands of Offering at the end of the hallway. A door blocks the path to the endings, and only by giving the correct items to the corresponding hands can Theo open the doors and finally reach the point where he must make a decision about his ending.

Symbolically, the hallway represents the moment when Theo has completely withdrawn into his own world, where he is forced to confront and battle with his own mind. The rooms along the hallway act as fragments of his past, while the journey toward the final doors represents his gradual confrontation with the experiences and struggles that have shaped him.

Environment Room of Regrets: This room represents a glimpse into Theo’s past and the difficult decision he made to live away from his wife in pursuit of his ambitions and dreams. He hoped that achieving success would eventually allow him to return and settle down with her again. The room portrays the moment when Theo made the decision to pursue his dream of becoming a game developer, while also reflecting the personal sacrifice and uncertainty that came with that choice.

Environment Room 302: Room 302 is a friendly nod to Silent Hill 4: The Room. In the game, Room 302 is the apartment where Walter Sullivan lived during his childhood, and his story has a significant impact on the other inhabitants of the apartment building. I included Room 302 as a subtle reference to one of the major inspirations behind the game’s atmosphere and environmental storytelling.

Environment Corporate Office: The Corporate Office is designed as a typical office environment, covered with an excessive amount of corporate jargon and familiar workplace phrases. The abundance of these texts represents Theo’s frustration with insincere, bloated, and overly complicated language used by people who, in his experience, often have little understanding of what they are doing and fail to produce meaningful results.

The environment reflects a toxic period in Theo’s life when he felt gatekept and suppressed, preventing him from growing and pursuing his ambitions. Through exaggerated corporate language and environmental storytelling, the room serves as a satirical commentary on toxic corporate culture and the frustrations that can emerge within it.

Environment Administrator Room: This is the apartment administrator’s room, which hides a secret that none of the other inhabitants know about. The room reveals a darker side of the administrator’s actions and intentions, suggesting that there is more happening behind the scenes than the other residents realize.

It also serves as a subtle satirical commentary on people in positions of authority and how power can be abused, revealing the corruption and darker behavior that can exist behind seemingly respectable positions.

Environment Basement: The Basement is a dark and claustrophobic environment featuring a hanging rope and a note on the wall that reads, “When you are at your lowest.” The phrase refers to reaching a psychological rock bottom, where the desire to escape from reality can lead a person to consider suicide as an option.

The room is intended to represent a state of extreme psychological despair and the darkest thoughts that can emerge when a person’s psyche reaches its lowest point. Rather than portraying suicide simply as an event, the environment focuses on the mindset behind it: when someone feels trapped, overwhelmed, and unable to see a way forward, even the most destructive form of escape can begin to appear as a possibility.

To improve my skills in various areas, particularly storytelling and animation, I decided to create a cinematic, linear game with cutscenes. At the same time, I wanted to improve my coding skills, reduce development time, and learn more about industry-standard development methods. For this reason, I used the UHFPS kit as the foundation for the project. While using the kit I have also researched and studied various different areas and created a library of information to be able to revisit those when needed.

Since the initial plan was to complete a demo in time to participate in Steam Next Fest, I quickly set up a small apartment room inspired by my real apartment and created a three-month development plan. During this period, I manually created assets using Blender 3D and used texture resources such as AmbientCG and Poly Haven. Because the goal was to create the game as quickly and cheaply as possible, I also relied on free assets from the Unity Asset Store.

I completed the demo by the end of the three-month deadline and released it both for Steam Next Fest and on itch.io. After receiving positive feedback and suggestions for improvement, I decided to invest more in assets that I could use for both this and future projects. This significantly improved the overall quality of the game and also motivated me to expand the project, push my limits, and provide more for the player.

However, expanding the project to this extent turned out not to be an efficient strategy. After eight months of continuously expanding the project, I realised that I was making a mistake and that the game was moving further away from release. I therefore stopped development and immediately created a new plan to squeeze the entire project into a smaller and shorter experience while still preserving the impact of the story.

After careful planning, rescaling, and a total of two years of development, the current Steam version of Reality Breach was released and received a Mostly Positive review rating. The itch.io version still contains the legacy version of the game, allowing players to see the differences and changes made throughout development.

However, the outcome was not yet where I wanted it to be. The demo lacked an AI enemy, mainly because my skills were still limited at the time and I was not yet able to implement the system to the level I wanted. Rather than delaying the demo, I decided to present it as a teaser experience without the AI, allowing me to meet the Steam Next Fest deadline while still giving players an introduction to the game.

Throughout development, I used Miro and Trello for planning and project management. I prepared a three-month development plan with specific targets, documented my progress on a daily basis, and worked towards delivering the demo within the planned timeframe.

For this first demo, I also relied entirely on free assets and resources, keeping the development costs as close to zero as possible.

The demo did not attract significant attention, but it gave me my first noticeable spike in visits and impressions. Seeing people discover and play the game was encouraging, and it motivated me to expand the project, especially as players frequently commented on the small size of the area and the limited amount of content.

While the overall feedback on the gameplay and environment was mostly positive, the lighting was still a noticeable weakness. This was when I decided to start investing in assets that I could use for Reality Breach and future projects. The investment paid off, significantly improving the game’s graphical quality while also making it easier for me to expand the project.

However, this was also the beginning of the first major mistake I would discover during development.

I started by improving the main apartment room. I redecorated the environment and began experimenting with lighting while learning more about how to use it effectively. At the same time, I started brainstorming the puzzles I wanted to introduce and the amount of consumable resources, such as batteries, that the player would have access to.

During this process, I discovered that the apartment could still be challenging and frustrating for some players because of its relatively small area and the presence of an active AI monster patrolling the environment. To address this, I decided to introduce an air vent system. This not only provided the player with an alternative way to navigate the apartment, but eventually became an important part of the game’s puzzles and story.

Once I was satisfied with the apartment’s layout, I began thinking about how to expand the overall map. This was the point where I became increasingly ambitious and expanded the project much further than I originally needed to.

I initially planned a complete apartment complex consisting of five floors. Each floor would contain a room leading to a different path exploring Theo’s memories and past. Each room would have its own theme and challenges. In addition, I planned an outside area where, after completing the apartment complex, the player would escape from the monster and run towards a specific location. This sequence would culminate in a cinematic cutscene followed by a final boss battle.

I followed this expanded plan for approximately eight months. Eventually, I realised that continuing to expand the project was becoming a mistake. The scope was growing too large and the game was moving further away from a realistic release. I therefore decided to stop expanding and instead squeeze the story and gameplay into a shorter experience that could still deliver the impact I originally wanted.

The early development and expansion phases had been a great learning experience. They helped me understand how I needed to approach development, planning, and decision-making in order to successfully bring a game to completion. However, Reality Breach had a fundamental flaw: its game design. At this stage, it was already too late to completely change the game’s design, so I decided to work with what I had and find a way to reshape the experience without sacrificing the story.

I decided not to completely change the first part of the game, but I removed a significant amount of content from it to make the experience more manageable. For the second part, I created a new scene and built it around the idea that Theo was now inside his own void, confronting his inner world. This is where the Narrator was introduced as Theo’s inner voice, constantly talking back to him.

I also transformed the original apartment building concept into five smaller locations. Each location would reveal another part of Theo’s past, allowing me to provide more context about his character while keeping the overall experience much more focused and manageable.

This approach allowed me to preserve the core story and themes of Reality Breach while significantly reducing the scope and bringing the project back towards a realistic path to release.

Based on the playtesting results, I made the necessary fixes and improvements. At the same time, I began actively working on the game’s social media presence and advertising across different platforms.

Once I felt the game was ready for release, I reviewed the upcoming release calendar and considered the timing of the next Steam Scream Fest and its Halloween-related promotion. Based on this, I decided to set the release date for September 4.

Before release, I also began reaching out to streamers and YouTubers and invited them to play the demo and potentially showcase it on their channels. In return, they would receive a free key for the full game when it launched. Additionally, I reached out to more than 30 curators and provided them with review keys.

By the time of release, I had also contacted a dozen streamers and YouTubers directly, providing them with free keys to the full game in case they were interested in streaming or creating content around it.

Throughout this final stage, I also gained valuable lessons that I can carry into my next projects. In particular, I learned the importance of controlling scope, planning development more realistically, starting marketing at the correct time, elements that horror players expecting to deliver a successful horror game, and making decisions based on the resources and time available. These lessons will directly influence how I approach the planning, development, and release of my future games.

After two years of development, Reality Breach was finally released.

It may be a small step for humankind, but it was a big one for me. 🙂