Project: Orient

Independent Developer

November 2024 - Present

Project: Orient is a personal project which aims to use dialogue and choice to create a compelling murder mystery narrative

ABOUT

Project: Orient is a personal project which I am working on as an exercise in narrative and systems design. Project: Orient is being developed independently in Unreal Engine 5 and uses previous work done on 'P.U.B', specifically the dialogue system.

I aim to self-publish this work on Steam, Itch.io and any of self-publishing platforms. I estimate development time to be around six months, dependent on personal circumstances.

I decided to start Project: Orient because I wanted to continue to retain my ability to work in game engines competently and because I wanted to test my own writing and narrative design abilities especially.

I will be documenting design and development through the use of a flexible workboard, such as Miro, and using Jira as my project/ workflow management tool.

CHOICE OF TOOLS

Unreal Engine 5

I have chosen to develop my project in Unreal Engine 5, this is due to it's relevance and frequent use across the industry. UE5 is also supported by Epic Games who supply many asset packs to be used in their engine, using these asset packs will reduce development time as I will not have to produce my own assets.

Miro

To document my design process I have chosen to use Miro. Miro provides a flexible workspace to lay out my design ideas in one place. I considered using Miro alongside writing a design document, however I decided against the design document as it would take too much time away from development.

Jira

My project management tool will be Jira. I've chosen Jira because it's a contemporary piece of software used within the industry and will be effective when used in an agile development workflow.

ITCH

Check out my Itch.io page!

https://rhysjcshaw.itch.io

I will be aiming to post development updates on the project here when I can