The School

Project Description

The School is a 3D psychological horror adventure game developed in Unity that explores the emotional and narrative potential of abandoned environments. Set within a distorted version of a familiar school, the game uses exploration, environmental storytelling, and puzzle-based interaction to create a sense of isolation, uncertainty, and psychological tension.

Rather than relying on direct horror elements, the project focuses on the unsettling atmosphere of liminal spaces — environments that exist between familiarity and unfamiliarity. Through empty classrooms, endless corridors, abandoned objects, and fragmented clues, players reconstruct the hidden history of the space while questioning the boundary between memory and reality.

The project investigates:

How can environments themselves become storytellers, allowing players to construct narratives through observation, exploration, and interpretation?

Concept & Ideology

The School was inspired by the concept of liminal spaces: places designed for transition that become unsettling when removed from their original purpose.

A classroom normally represents learning, community, and routine. However, when emptied of people and placed outside its expected context, the same environment becomes unfamiliar and psychologically disturbing.

The project explores how ordinary spaces transform through absence:

• A hallway becomes threatening when there is no one walking through it.
• A classroom becomes mysterious when objects remain but people disappear.
• Familiar architecture becomes unsettling when its original meaning is removed.

By transforming a recognizable environment into an uncertain space, the project examines how players use memory and expectation to interpret unfamiliar situations.

Narrative Design

The story begins when the player receives an invitation to attend a class reunion at a Japanese restaurant. Upon arrival, the location appears completely abandoned.

While exploring the empty restaurant, the player discovers a strange connection between the space and their former school. Opening a refrigerator unexpectedly transports them into a distorted version of their high school — a place that appears familiar but follows an unfamiliar logic.

Within this surreal environment, players uncover fragments of a missing person's story through:

• Scattered notes
• Abandoned personal belongings
• Missing person flyers
• Locked rooms
• Distorted signage
• Mysterious phone messages

Rather than presenting a linear explanation, the narrative is constructed through environmental clues, allowing players to gradually assemble their own understanding of what happened.

World & Environment Design

The environment was designed as a psychological space where visual details carry narrative meaning.

Abandoned Familiarity

The school retains recognizable elements such as classrooms, hallways, cafeterias, and lockers, but their emptiness creates a sense of discomfort and displacement.

Spatial Distortion

The environment gradually shifts away from reality through impossible layouts, repetitive spaces, hidden areas, and altered objects.

These changes create uncertainty and encourage players to question whether they are exploring a physical location, a memory, or a psychological state.

Environmental Storytelling

Objects within the environment function as narrative fragments. Instead of relying on traditional dialogue, players discover information through:

• Object placement
• Visual details
• Architectural changes
• Environmental atmosphere

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Gameplay Systems

Exploration

Players investigate the abandoned school environment, discovering hidden areas and collecting clues that reveal the underlying mystery.

Puzzle Solving

Environmental puzzles encourage players to carefully observe their surroundings and connect fragmented information.

Psychological Tension

The game creates suspense through atmosphere, sound, and uncertainty rather than constant action.

The player's curiosity and interpretation become the primary drivers of the experience.

Design Process

Concept Development

The project began with exploring how familiar environments could be transformed into unsettling experiences. Early development focused on combining horror conventions with environmental storytelling.

Level Design & Worldbuilding

The school environment was structured to guide player exploration while maintaining uncertainty. Each area was designed to contribute to the larger mystery and reinforce the feeling of being trapped within an unfamiliar version of a familiar place.

3D Environment Creation

I developed the school's visual environment through 3D modeling and scene construction, focusing on details that communicate history, abandonment, and psychological atmosphere.

Sound & Atmosphere Design

Ambient sound, lighting, and spatial effects were used to enhance immersion and create tension within otherwise empty spaces.

Testing & Iteration

Playtesting was conducted to refine pacing, navigation, puzzle difficulty, and narrative clarity.

Liminal Spaces & Backrooms

The project incorporates ideas from liminal space theory and the online phenomenon of the Backrooms to create environments that feel both familiar and impossible.

Backrooms

The game uses repetitive corridors, hidden rooms, and spatial uncertainty to create feelings of disorientation and isolation.

These spaces challenge the player's understanding of location and progression, creating an environment that feels endless and unstable.

Liminal Spaces

Hallways, staircases, empty classrooms, and transitional areas become central narrative spaces.

These locations represent moments between states — between past and present, memory and reality, safety and danger.

Through these spaces, the project explores how environments can evoke emotional responses even without traditional characters or events.

Connection to Research Practice

The School represents an early exploration of worldbuilding through designed environments.

The project established my interest in how spaces can communicate hidden narratives and influence human interpretation.

By creating an environment where players construct meaning from incomplete information, the project became a foundation for my later work in interactive narrative systems and generative worldbuilding.

The question evolved from:

"How can a designer create a world that guides interpretation?"

to:

"What happens when the system itself begins participating in creating the world?"

Tools

Unity
3D Environment Design
Level Design
Narrative Design
Worldbuilding
Sound Design
Interactive Experience Design

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