Alice’s Lullaby
(Albino Lullaby: Episode 2)
Alice’s Lullaby is the second episode of Albino Lullaby, a horror game set in a surreal, puritanical society. Having played the first episode come out while I was still in college, I emailed the developer, Ape Law, after I had graduated. Soon, I found myself being brought aboard as a level designer!
Since everybody on this project has been working on it on the side, development has been protracted over years. Because of this, I’ve been able to come back to a number of the levels I’ve worked on here and apply new knowledge. It’s been a stark indicator of how much I’ve learned.
As the project went on, I was asked to implement a number of features that we needed for the game, allowing me to branch out into technical design and blueprint scripting. These tasks ranged from fixing bugs, to making a blueprint for a mirror, to creating our inventory screen!
I also devoted time to optimization work after running into performance issues on a number of our levels. Using the Unreal 4 profiler, I found that a number of our blueprints were set up in inefficient ways, such as having dynamic lights instead of stationary lights. After an overhaul of our blueprints, I was getting 60 frames per second consistently on my laptop.
Concepting, Sketches, and Blockouts
At the beginning of the project I was given outlines for five different houses, each corresponding to a different character. Following the description of each level, I set to sketching out each space.
Eventually, we hit upon the idea of combining these houses with different building types- a museum, a factory, a prison- to create surreal environments that felt appropriate for Albino. While a number of these were held back for Episode 3, Episode 2 includes Fairday’s House, which was inspired by Jeremy Bentham’s illustration of the Panopticon.
Environmental Decoration
At one point in the project, I was asked to help decorate the interiors of some buildings within the town area in our game, which serves as the hub level for Episode 2. Working within the existing “shells” of the structures provided resulted in some very odd layouts, but ones that I felt were fitting for Albino Lullaby’s tone.
While working on these spaces, it occurred to me how much the themes of family dysfunction came up in our game, and I decided to subtly reinforce this through the decoration itself. Beams that support the ceiling are warped and crooked, walls are at odd angles, and the shape of rooms are awkward, resulting in environments that are still reminiscent of a family home, but look starkly different.