Gallery Thief
Gallery Thief is a 3D stealth game prototype where the player takes the role of a thief breaking into an art gallery. The prototype showcases several different stealth mechanics such as camera and laser detection systems, reactive AI, and interesting ways to avoid being caught.
I was one of many game/level designers of this project.
Overview
Gallery Thief was one of the first big projects I worked on in Unity. I pitched the idea to the team and I was happy to see that they were interested as well. It taught me so much about the game development pipeline and Unity as a whole. This was also my first project done completely remotely. There were a lot of challenges because of this, but I think the team communicated the best we could to create the prototype.
Takeaway
Contributors
Janet Santoyo
Artist
Jethro Schoppenhorst
Sam Hirsch
Programmers
Aaron Baer
Carley Thompson
Sound Designers
Danny Lopez
Luke Mcpherson
Andy Ocampo
Noel Rich
Adrian Yogore
Designers
Work Samples
This is the layout of the main gallery that was created by one of our designers Luke McPherson.
Each designer was tasked to create the layout of one of exhibits and I was assigned Exhibit E. The room is symmetrical and rectangular. My plan for this room was to create surrounding props and an AI path that would match the symmetry of the room while also challenging the player's ability to avoid detection.
Exhibit E Gallery Room
I went through a couple of sketches for the layout until I finally landed on this one.
While I’m not the biggest fan of perfect symmetry, I leaned in to it for this room as there was not much space to work with.
The red dashed lines represent the AI guard's path while the shapes represent props such as exhibits, benches, and art pieces framed on the wall. I also added a camera in the corner near one of the room exits so that the player can time their escape.
With the first draft of the exhibit created, I began creating a quick prototype using Probuilder and a generic player controller I had laying around.
The prototype really helped me understand the spacing needed between the player and the surrounding objects and gave me further insight into the design of the level.
Also with this prototype, I was able to do a fast demonstration of how the AI guard would move by simply updating the position of the red capsule pawn.
This is what the final exhibit looked like. The room ended up being scaled up to accommodate all of the props and to have the player be able to move freely.
After playtesting, it was noticeable that some of my ideas did not come across as I would’ve liked and the room was to easy to maneuver in. To combat this, I added some lasers in between the objective in order to make it harder for the player to run in, grab the golden turtle, and run out.
Overall, for one of my first big Unity projects, I’m happy with how things turned out. Some things were rushed and I think with more playtesting we could’ve come up with better iterations, but I was happy with the results.
