Summary:In Alpha Molds, players enter a tense, survival-horror world where mercenaries battle against biological threats and rival factions to secure valuable materials. Combining the intensity of PvPvE gameplay with immersive storytelling, struggle for survival against oppressive enemies to extract or perish..
Story
The human race has advanced enough to overpopulate Earth, so colonising other planets was the only solution. During one colonising expedition, an excavation team found a new metal that was both significantly stronger and pliable than any material found on Earth. As a result, humans started to terraform and populate this new planet while also expanding mining facilities.
As mining operations progressed, humanity uncovered some kind of mould with incredible healing properties. This discovery led to the mould's use in medicine to create and replace prostheses, particularly in combination with the newly found metal. To gather more subjects for prosthesis testing, several surgical centres were established, and new colonization vacancies were opened. Unfortunately, during the testing phases, one patient was found to have a tumour that caused the mould to change in unpredictable ways…
Product Overview
Genre
Extraction shooter, Survival Horror, Exploration, PVPVE, Multiplayer
Target Audience
Alpha Molds target audience consists of hardcore extraction shooter players in their mid-teens to late twenties, especially those players who may be interested in exploring while discovering the story through environmental cues and loot hoarding by levelling up and completing missions.
Platforms
Windows / PC
Software
Using Unreal Engine 5.4 as the game engine version, 3D assets are created with Blender, while art assets are made in Krita and Photoshop in combination with Quixel Mixer for textures. World-building tools like Gaea are also utilized to create landscapes.
Play Mechanic
The players will assume the perspective of a mercenary, contracted to retrieve the most quantity of infected material in the colony. The key components of the gameplay are exploration, combat and survival.
The player’s controls are by keyboard and mouse, classic WASD inputs while using the mouse to control the character view focus.
Players Objective
The player's main objective is to locate and extract contaminated material from the biggest life form infected in the area. In contrast to Dead Space, the player character movement will be freer with dynamic movement and a minor climbing system, with vault and simple climbing. Base management will help the player progress and update systems that unlock better equipment and status.
Game Mechanics
Game loop
As an extraction shooter, the main mechanics are acquiring the most resources, completing missions, and extracting loot. Players can choose between stealth to avoid biological threats or aggressive combat to secure high-risk resources. Every decision impacts survival.
Dynamic combat system
The dynamic cover system automatically adjusts the player character's posture based on nearby cover geometry and its state machine (crouch/standing/laying), using linetrace detection similar to climbing systems to ensure full coverage automatically.
Enemy visibility is determined by character line-of-sight rather than camera position, and peek behavior is influenced by the character's urgency state (stamina/adrenaline levels).
Technical Implementation
A series of linetraces are triggered adapting character animation to the geometry hight.
- Linetrace-based cover detection (similar to climbing/vaulting systems)
- Procedural crouch height adjustment based on cover geometry
- Character POV-based enemy rendering (inspired by SCUM)
- Urgency state system tied to stamina and enemy proximity
Design Rationale
Third-person perspective creates a fundamental fairness issue in competitive shooters: players can exploit wall-hugging to see enemies without exposure, breaking the tension of survival horror and creating unfair advantages in PvP scenarios.
Design Goals:
- Eliminate wall-hugging exploits while maintaining third-person immersion
- Preserve survival horror tension through vulnerability
- Support competitive fairness in PvP extraction scenarios
- Reduce input complexity and improve accessibility
Solution Approach:
Instead of forcing first-person (which breaks the game core camera perspective) or accepting the exploit, I combined character POV-based rendering with procedural cover behavior. This creates a system where the character's awareness drives visibility, not the camera's position, while providing natural feedback through body language.
Key Design Decisions:
- Decision: Use character POV for enemy rendering instead of camera POV
- Why: Eliminates wall-hugging exploit at the root, if the character can't see the enemy, neither can the player
- Trade-off: Requires players to adapt to different visibility rules than most third-person games, potentially creating initial confusion.
- Decision: Automatic cover detection
- Why: Reduces input complexity (one less button to manage) and creates more fluid, reactive movement, since the character will automatically peek corners and above covers to ensure enemy visibility.
- Trade-off: Less precise control, since cover levels will automatically take in consideration the possible peek positions.
- Decision: Tie peek behavior to stamina/urgency states
- Why: Creates diegetic feedback about character state and adds tactical depth (tired characters are more cautious)
- Trade-off: Adds complexity to stamina system, requiring expansion to an adrenaline system and requires careful balancing to avoid frustration.
Impact & Validation:
- Fairness: Eliminates wall-hugging exploit while maintaining third-person perspective
- Immersion: Character behavior provides diegetic feedback about danger and state
- Accessibility: Reduces input complexity (no manual peeking button)
- Onboarding: System naturally teaches POV mechanics through character behavior
- Unexpected benefit: Creates emergent tactical depth through stamina management
Validation approach: Blockout testing with focus on edge cases (partial cover, destructible cover, network latency in multiplayer). Would use 5W1H framework to ensure coverage of all aspects: Why (fairness + immersion), How (technical implementation), Where/When (context and triggers), Who (all players), What (desired player experience).
Controls
Camera and Navigation
The camera will use the classic over-the-shoulder perspective inspired by games such as Dead Space and Resident Evil 4. Understanding the multiplayer environment and the open-world exploration, the camera will be slightly further away from the main character.
Objectives
The player objectives can be broken down into two types, the Level Objectives and Faction Objectives aside from the main extracting objective.
Level objectives will be found during map exploration. These may involve fixing malfunctions, restoring electricity in facilities, or escorting survivors to the extraction point.
Inspired by games like The Cycle Frontier and Escape From Tarkov there will be a faction system where the player would be able to choose which faction he wants to focus on, each faction will grant different types of missions and rewards.
By finding logs scattered across the environment the player reveals the backstory of the colony’s fall, unlocks blueprints for better gear and completes objectives throughout the map.
To keep the horror atmosphere the player will encounter a few challenges in the form of environmental obstacles that were touched upon in Level Objectives, diverse enemy types and also other players.
Characters
The player character mechanics will behave following a set of general rules and a few specific rules of the main armour type the character will equip.
Those general rules will affect how the player perceives the character’s health status, armour status and visibility while the main armour type will affect a specific change in the general behaviour.
Armour Type
The armour type can be changed and upgraded at the base and will be categorized into a few classes.
→ Rescue Armour: This class will focus on healing and rescuing downed team members.
→ Assault Armour: Will focus on damage dealing, armour and weapon handling.
→ Recon Armour: Is responsible for recon, camouflage and solo adventures.
Progression
The character progression is intrinsically tied with the base progression, where the character can upgrade the base and by doing that the player will be able to achieve better general inventory.
Base Progression
The base progression is broken down into sections and by investing money or completing tasks for those specific sectors the player can upgrade the ship, granting better gear, items and resources passive acquisition. Those sections are:
- Armoury → Will improve the player’s weapons
- Infirmary → Will improve the player’s passive healing and healing cost after a raid
- Stash → Will improve the player stash size
- Headquarters → Will improve the extraction time, granting faster mission extractions
- Cabins → Will improve the passive resources acquisition, by granting friendly NPCs that go to missions to gather resources.
Level Design
Understanding the concept of a planetary colony and mining facilities, the environment should convey the idea of robust yet sci-fi constructions on an unfamiliar planet with diverse fauna and flora, while the design should enable players to explore the environment through storytelling and face challenges from enemy encounters.
The level design breakdown can be seen on the page below.
Interfaces and User Experience
A dietetic HUD was selected to enhance the user experience by promoting a sense of immersion. While the standard HUD has its advantages, the dietetic HUD effectively conveys information without directly interacting with the player, resulting in a more immersive experience.
Sound Effects and Music
To enhance player immersion, the sound effects and music are entirely diegetic, composed solely of noises originating from the game world. This creates a more believable world without sound pollution that may confuse players or obscure other important environmental cues.