Over the holiday break at the end of 2021 I was really inspired by a few things.

First, I was playing a lot of moodier, slower paced games over the break; Unpacking, Paper’s Please, Stories Untold, and The Long Dark - If you haven’t played any of these, please do!

Second, my girlfriend did some fantastic concept art! (below).
I really enjoy doing “audio sketches” to concept art in particular, which is essentially just cutting BG sounds that match the prompt and putting them in some kind of dynamic playback system. Sometimes that’s just Ableton Live, other times that’s in a game engine. It’s also a good opportunity to experiment with new tools and tech as well.

I’d been meaning to try out some things in Unreal that I hadn’t gotten a chance, so I figured I’d take a crack at putting sounds to this piece in Unreal. One thing led to another, and it turned into an interactive kind of tech demo in the form of a point-and-click style puzzle game.

If you’re interested in downloading it for yourself, you can grab it here: The Basement - Itch.io (Windows Only)

Victoria Canning’s Original Artwork

A screenshot from my gameplay adaptation in Unreal

I figured documenting this might be interesting or help some other folks out too, so I wanted to put down some information about what actually went into this personal project.
This led to actually creating a whole “commentary” kind of guide in the game itself. It walks you through the mechanics and has some screenshots of the logic in Unreal too.
If you don’t have the ability or interest in downloading the game for yourself, you can check out either a gameplay capture (just game sounds) or a walkthrough capture (with my commentary) at the video links below.