Loading...

A Deep World

Unity 2D stealth adventure game where you guide a small creature through a dangerous underwater world. Explore, hide, and outmaneuver procedurally animated predators to find a lost friend. As the main developer I created all gameplay systems, AI behaviors and game feel elements like lighting and vfx. Initially a student project with collaborators from Berklee School of Music, I continue the project for final release.

Winner of “best game” in “Principe de Los Paramos” 2025 awards in Colombia.

steam download game epic games download game itch io play game

Main contributions

  • Created a dynamic flocking system supporting 700+ agents at 60fps with Unity Job system and Burst Compiler
  • Developer the enemy AI so our predators react to player actions, patrol areas, chase player and show frustration when player hides during a chase
  • Created a robust decoupled code architecture for all the systems using observer, singleton and state patterns across the project
  • Polished game feel through VFX, lighting, and animation tuning
  • Support our audio team by taking the role of audio programmer, dealing with fmod in Unity
  • Built a programmable cinematic system for in-game storytelling. Using the power of procedural animation our cinematic system is 100% by code and not Unity Timeline
  • Coordinated and analyzed insights from 20+ player playtests

Experience and Design goals

After multiple iterations (checkout the design process for more) I wanted to achieve specific goals:

  • Make the player feel scared and alone in an unknown world. A feeling of “I shouldn’t be here” caused by the environment and the AI behaviors of predators and other creatures around.
  • Embrace minimalist design by having just one core mechanic and using visuals to tell the player how to play and progress. The only text you see is the main menu and the pause menu.
  • Deliver a strong sense of vulnerability and tension through game feel (vfx, sound and visuals) and pacing

This is an effort on minimalist design with inspirations from games like Alien Isolation and Amnesia.

Making the enemy AI

The main idea was to mimic sight and sound perception. If the predator sees you, it will follow or chase you depending on how far away you are. I also created a way for the chase to continue even if the predator loses sight of you for a moment. I also added a frustration state the Predator shows when the player hides just in time during a chase. All this is done through behavior tress that talk to our Predator script that handles the states (default, investigate, follow, chasing and frustrated). Check the image below for a graphic representation of how the AI works.

A Deep World AI design by Jose Striedinger
A Deep World by Jose Striedinger

Flocking System

In an effort to make the world feel more alive I created a flocking system with Unity Job system and Burst compiler. First, I started by actually reading a Craig Reynolds original Boids paper, learning about the principles of alignment, cohesion and separation. Afterwards I added my own twist to get specific behavior like following, orbit, hard and soft avoidance.

Flock patrolling an area defined by array of positions
Flocking preview of agents following the player

The FlockManager is responsible for creating and managing the agents, as well as establishing the behaviors that specific flock will have.

  • FlockCore behavior that handles the base alignment, cohesion and separation code. Without this theres no flock really
  • FlockGoal behavior handles if we want the flock to go somewhere specific like follow the player or patrol a route.
  • FlockContainment that handles if we want to contain the flock in a specific area (a collider is used for this)
  • FlockAvoid handles if the agents must avoid externals objects. A Hard void is that the agent will act like scary fish, if say the player gets near we make the agent go to the opposite direction with an extra acceleration. A soft avoid is the idea that the agent must “swim around” said object. This is still in progress as it is very costly.

The Design Process

Ideation: Visit to CSC

After experimenting with a few mechanic-based prototypes, my teammate and I visited the California Science Center for inspiration. Observing strange sea creatures turned out to be exactly what we needed. I became fascinated by organisms with reactive, tentacle-like filaments—they sparked the idea of capturing a living, surreal underwater ecosystem that is in constant movement by the use of procedural 2D animation.

Inspired by our visit to California Science Center, I worked in squid-like movement.

Preproduction: experimenting with goals and constraints

First couple of weeks experimenting. I built movement-focused prototypes and experiments to convey character emotions without dialogue. A trip to the California Science Center and procedural animation prototypes inspired our alien underwater world setting, also leading to our key design constraint: no dialogue, minimal text.

Every single prototype tried to answer a design question:

Can I make a player feel empathy towards a cube with just animation and audio?
How much spontaneous animation is needed to make players engaged with NPCs?

Minimalist stealth gameplay

Aiming for accessibility and simplicity, I focused on movement and a single versatile mechanic, a “call” mechanic. Inspired by games like Super Meat Boy, our character remains unchanged, you get no power ups or anything like that, is the situations that change. Playtesting proved to very extremely important to get the movement just right so that players feel as a fast but fragile underwater creature.

Using the “Call” to communicate with your friend

Using “Call” to get the monster’s attention

Using “Call” to open gates