The Blackout Club

Role: Post-launch Level Designer

Game: The Blackout Club (1-4 player co-op horror, stealth immersive sim)

Platform: PC (Steam link), PS4, Xbox One

I Implemented post-launch missions: Collect Cancelers, Record CHORUS Data Tap, and Set up Exorcism Kit (which the player base lovingly calls "Shadow People.") I also worked on the design and implementation of curses (optional difficulty mutators) and AI stealth model tuning.

Mission Design

Collect Cancelers

I noticed high skill players often posed unconscious enemies around town and wanted to reward their efforts. Players must grab "cancelers" - headphones that disrupt CHORUS' brainwash signal, then plant them on marked sleeper enemies. When all cancelers are placed, players must frob a detonator to permanently knock out the targets. The bodies must be carried to the detonator location. Additional bodies on the pile grant extra evidence XP!

Record CHORUS Data Tap

The goal of this mission was facilitating teamwork under pressure. Players must enter the underground maze to record CHORUS' surveillance system. This reveals computers on the surface monitoring the populace for "seditious terms". Players must record marked computers within a time limit or the targets reset, but recording any computer grants bonus time and XP. This creates a crisis moment - players must commit to a plan quickly - a design space TBC had not explored before this mission. I worked with Senior UI Artist Sam Gauss on the computer icons, which needed an "optional" status once players started the timer.

Set up Exorcism Kit

The movie "It Follows" was a major inspiration for TBC. I wanted to recreate the experience of looking over your shoulder, knowing you're being hunted. For this mission players must collect contaminated sleep masks around town and deliver them to be exorcized. Holding a mask summons a player-seeking "shadow person." On contact, the player teleports to one of several holding cells in the CHORUS maze, and their mask is dropped. Delivering 1 mask at a time was too simple in early playtests, so I required players to deliver masks in sets of 3. This fostered teamwork in the community. Players devised a self-sacrificing strategy of gathering masks, approaching the delivery point, and allowing the shadow people to take them - ensuring another player could deliver the full set.

The Blackout Club - Level Graybox

Role: Solo Level Designer

Tech: Unreal Engine 4, Maya, Photoshop

Process: Devlog here

This level did not ship, but it got me the job at Question.

I designed this graybox level of Question's The Blackout Club to create spaces for emergent team gameplay. The level has four zones: The house upper level, the house lower level, the chords (in the maze), and the magnet (in the maze). I chose a contemporary McMansion style home to re-use The Blackout Club’s existing art assets and drew layout references from other mansion levels in immersive sim lineage games, like the Boyle Mansion in Dishonored, a smidge of the house in Gone Home, and Lord Bafford’s Manor in the original Thief.

Verticality was important in creating these team spaces. In the chords, players can move suspended platforms to manipulate their shadows on the floor below. This is the only source of shadow (thus hiding places) on the lower floor. Players must work together and use their hero items and collectibles to form a safe path.

Leaving the pool in the house lower level also uses vertical spaces to force the player into a creative team mindset. Since the pool is below the enemy paths, players exitting the maze here cannot see all the potential locations for an enemy. They must rely on other players for a sight line, collectibles, or find another creative solution to exit the maze without getting caught.