Dissonance
Dissonance is a psychological horror game driven by puzzles and narrative.
The resident of this house has passed away. You have been hired by an anonymous client to uncover who this person was and how they died. As a private investigator, you are expected to handle all kinds of unusual cases, but this one is unlike anything you have ever encountered.
My Role
UX/UI Designer, Programmer & Facilitator
Platform
Unreal Engine
Duration
8 weeks
Team
6 people
Ideation
During the first week, we brainstormed the game's genre, core mechanics, and point of view. We decided to create a first-person psychological horror game with puzzle-solving and a strong narrative focus, using the first-person perspective to enhance player immersion.
UI Design
During the brainstorming phase, we decided to incorporate paper-inspired UI elements to reinforce the identity of our main character, a private investigator. One of the key needs identified in our persona research was to minimize information overload, so it was important that the interface remained clean and displayed only essential information.
I chose a dark color palette to reflect the game's psychological horror theme. Paper textures and notebook pages were used to represent the inventory and journal systems, reinforcing both the game's atmosphere and the protagonist's profession.
iteration process
During the alpha phase, we were still defining the inventory items and the journal system. I developed the inventory while another team member worked on the journal.
Later, I discovered that a Widget Switcher could have simplified the tab navigation. However, since the inventory was already integrated with the final puzzle and I was still learning Unreal Engine's UI system, I chose not to use it and had separate widgets instead.
Final iteration
I created three initial wireframes to explore different inventory layouts and determine which worked best. After the alpha review, I reduced the inventory's size and darkened its color palette, as it occupied too much screen space and appeared too bright compared to the environment.
Following the beta review, we moved several items from the journal to the inventory to improve consistency. In the final iteration, I also added scrolling to accommodate the additional items.
Challenges
Multiple roles. My primary role throughout the project was UX/UI Designer and facilitator. As development progressed, I also took on programming tasks to implement UI functionality, which meant I couldn't dedicate my full attention to the design process.
Programming Limitations. Since our team consisted only of Game Designers and UX Designers, programming was one of our biggest challenges. This was also only our second project using Blueprints in Unreal Engine, so we faced a steep learning curve while implementing gameplay and UI systems.
Tools
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Discord
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Diversion
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Figma
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Jira
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Teams
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Unreal Engine