by Team Madpie
A demo of the game can be downloaded by clicking on the title and a sample of the game/prototype scripts written by me can be found here.
Introduction
Misophonia is a 2D hide and seek thriller game made in a custom game engine. The game features a single AI that seeks out the player to capture them.
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In this project, I was the Producer and took charge to manage the team's project timeline. I was also the AI Designer in charge of the behavior and actions of the AI, as well as writing and implementing scripts in the custom engine's AI behavior tree.
Early on in production, we had a prototype made in Unity3D and I iterated through various designs of the Stranger, including a Rock Golem beast, with various abilities. In the prototype, I created a custom node map system paired with A* pathfinding to aid the AI's movements.
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Strangers's Design
The base goal for the Stranger was to emulate the behavior of the "seeker" in a game of "Hide and Seek". The AI picks up clues on the player's potential position by studying the state of the game map. Lights are turned off and doors are closed by default. By taking note and remember the state of his environment, when a difference in the state from what he has "remembered" is discovered, the Stranger will explore and check the rooms in an attempt to seek out the player.
In order to avoid periods of downtime and games where the Stranger never appears, an AI Director supports the Stranger to lay breadcrumbs to guide the Stranger close to the player. The AI Director was balanced closely to avoid giving exact positions to the Stranger and wind up being a "map hack". This ensures that the Stranger and the player will meet, without the Stranger's presence being too overwhelming.