It’s been 30 years since a terrible arson attack erased an entire family. Until today the culprit has been on the loose. You are sent to investigate a similar incident in this narrative exploration game.

Core-Team: Leon Arndt, Lea Bormann, Huang Chen, Lauritz Vogelsang

Scorch

Duration: Oct 2017 – Jan 2018 (Exchange Semester – 5th Bachelor’s semester)

Scorch is an 3rd person narrative exploration game. The goal was to create a beautiful to look at game and narrate a muder-mistery story. If you’re a fan of Firewatch and Gone Home, you’ll love this game.

Features:

  • Original crime story
  • Enriched with Full Voice Acting
  • Interactable Objects (drawers, lights, secrets)
  • Scenic Forest Environment
  • Rebindable Controls
  • Day / Night Cycle
  • Slightly too many bugs

My responsibilities:
> Programming: Audio, Dialogue System, Subtitles
> Audio recording
> Storywriting
> User Testing
> Project Management
> Learning game design, and the 3D modelling workflow!



Core Take Aways

3D Modelling, Texturing & Implementation to Unity

Since it was my first bigger game with custom modelled assets, I had the opportunity to learn from my team mates who were already familiar with the 3D – Unity workflow. Every team member had different key competencies, and I was able to learn much from my team members. The main benefit for me was to foster my knowledge of the Realtime 3D Computer Graphics workflow.

Vision Keeping vs. Project Management

Although I did not know the team beforehand, had such a blast to manage this ambitious team, and to help to unleash the potential of Scorch.
For this team, the laissez-faire method was the best, since everyone was willing to make the best out of this game. However, when the final deadline was approaching, it was difficult to hold the team back to implement new features. In the end, compromises needed to make, and showed me the importance of balancing the amount time and additional features.

Don’t be afraid to show & test your game

This project also thaught me to present early game prototypes. Things do not need to be perfect during usertests, because that is the purpose of user tests. So, thinking and analysing does not make a game perfect, but testing, understanding, and iterating does!


References

Download Scorch for free:
On itch.io: https://neotalon.itch.io/scorch
On Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/875740/Scorch/

Media Coverage
Multiple game plays by international youtubers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O74k3btJZNk&list=PLmZ_HUlhwZfYcpNLuAMo-Sy-7X4mtgT5X&index=1
Golden Wire Award 2018:
https://www.fhstp.ac.at/de/newsroom/news/golden-wire-2018 (In German)
https://www.noen.at/st-poelten/fh-st-poelten-kreativitaet-wurde-belohnt-fh-st-poelten-golden-wire-127312967 (In German)