Dracula: Crimson Apostle is my first commercial project — a first-person narrative escape room set in a gothic Dracula universe. Inspired by the escape room games of MC2 Games, and built on top of a previous academic prototype One Paradox, this project has been in development for two years and covers every discipline: design, programming, production, and team leadership.
Game Design Document
Started with a One Page Design Document to define the core pillars: engine, genre, setting, mechanics, and aesthetic. As the project scope grew, I migrated the full GDD to Notion, which allowed for more granular planning — tracking puzzle solutions, game flow, progress milestones, and design decisions in a single source of truth.
Level Design
Mechanics were fully defined before any level design work began, ensuring the puzzle structure and spatial logic were built on a solid gameplay foundation.
Agile Development
Managed the full production cycle solo using SCRUM methodology, planning the project in sprints via Trello and Jira. Working as a solo developer made discipline and iteration essential — sprint planning was the main tool for keeping scope realistic and progress measurable.
Unity Development
Built entirely in Unity 6, extending the Puzzle Adventure Template as a starting framework (inventory system, journal, save system, escape room mechanics). The template provided a structural baseline but proved difficult to scale — heavy architectural changes caused cascading failures. I wrote custom scripts to extend and stabilise the codebase, working within and around the template's constraints.
Version Control
Used GitHub Desktop, then Fork, and finally migrated to Unity Version Control. Handled all branching, merging, and conflict resolution independently throughout the project.
Team Leadership
At two separate points in development, I onboarded student interns as collaborators, shifting into a Lead Developer role. Applied agile methodology rigorously — particularly important given the fully remote working setup.