Deep City

My first one-month-long game jam and my first 3D game!

Deep City was my first deep dive into complex Unity systems—a baptism by (salt)water. While I’d dabbled with small prototypes before, this project demanded multiple interconnected scenes, checkpoint saving, dialogue triggers, and enemy AI—all while maintaining the eerie atmosphere of a drowned city. I learned to:

Technical Implementation

• Scene Management: Used additive loading for seamless transitions between ocean depths and crumbling buildings
• Modular Systems: Created a dialogue system from scratch and checkpoint saving
• 3D Optimization: Balanced Unity's fog and lighting to hide draw distance limits while enhancing horror

Key Learnings:

1. Less Is More: Restricting visibility (to ~5 meters) amplified tension more than any monster design. Players’ imaginations filled the gaps.
2. Don't do too much at once: For this project I learned Blender, Unity 3D and a lot of coding. This led to a lot of learning, but a lot of stress as well. In retrospect, I'm surprised the game was even working.

The game was played by Alpha Beta Gamer, a youtuber I've been following for years at this point. Seeing him playing my game was a huge surprise and honor: