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ProjectM: Behind the Scenes of Creating Facility 13

ProjectM: Behind the Scenes of Creating Facility 13

Escape the dark, monster-infested Facility 13 by hiding, surviving, and solving puzzles—only your flashlight and wits can help you outrun the monster and unlock the final door to freedom.

Published Jan 14, 2025

Introduction

As a 21-year-old B.Tech Artificial Intelligence and Data Science student from India, I’ve always been fascinated by the world of game development. My latest creation, Facility 13, is a 2D survival horror game that combines tension, strategy, and immersive gameplay. Drawing inspiration from my childhood memories of Mall Monster, Facility 13 transforms those nostalgic moments into a gripping survival experience.
From crafting dynamic gameplay mechanics to deploying my game online with Amazon S3, this journey has been both challenging and rewarding. Most importantly, Amazon Q played a pivotal role in optimizing the game, ensuring a smooth and polished experience.
This article delves into the heart of Facility 13—its design, development process, challenges, and how Amazon services became instrumental in its success.

What It Does

Facility 13 is a 2D survival horror game where players navigate through a dark facility, solving puzzles, collecting resources, and evading a relentless monster.
The game begins with a top-down perspective, where players explore dark environments using a flashlight. The monster’s behavior is dynamic—sprinting alerts it, while hiding forces it to actively search before resuming patrols. Later, the gameplay shifts to a 2D platformer perspective, adding obstacles and new mechanics to keep players on edge.

Key Features:

  1. Dynamic Monster AI:
    The monster reacts to player actions, making each encounter unique and tense.
  2. Flashlight Upgrades:
    Upgrades improve visibility but require strategic use of limited resources.
  3. Inventory System:
    Players manage items like stamina potions, flashbangs, and keys, each critical to survival.
  4. Diverse Gameplay:
    From the snow-covered sections to heart-pounding chase scenes, the game offers varied challenges.
  5. Perspective Transition:
    A seamless shift from top-down to platformer gameplay adds depth and variety.

How I Built It

I built Facility 13 using Unity 6, focusing on 2D gameplay mechanics. Unity’s Tilemap system helped create detailed levels (floors and walls), and I used Unity’s built-in physics for the platformer sections.
For scripting and game logic, I heavily relied on Amazon Q, integrated into Visual Studio 2022. It provided intelligent autocomplete suggestions, context-aware corrections, and step-by-step code generation for specific functionalities. Most of my interaction with Q was through its chat panel, where I would describe the feature I wanted, and it would provide detailed scripts and Unity setup instructions.
AmazonQSample
How Amazon Q helped me upgrade the existing Player Movement Sound
AmazonQSample
Amazon Q also helped me with the Unity side of things
For example, I wanted to improve the Monster Chase logic to make the monster’s behavior more dynamic and unpredictable. I provided a detailed prompt to Q describing how I wanted the monster to behave. It responded with updates to six existing scripts, provided explanations for each, and offered Unity setup instructions to align with the new logic. This was incredibly efficient and saved me significant time.
AmazonQSample
How Amazon Q helped me update the existing Monster AI script
The transition between top-down and platformer views was another challenging aspect that Q helped streamline. It guided me on separating the behaviors and assets for the monster in each view, allowing smooth transitions without glitches.
For deployment, I used AWS S3 to host the web build of the game. This allowed me to share Facility 13 with others easily, making it accessible directly via a web link.
Try the game here.

What’s Next for Facility 13

I plan to:
  • Add more environmental challenges, such as puzzles or timed events.
  • Introduce new monster types and AI behaviors for diverse gameplay.
  • Enhance the story with deeper lore and cutscenes.
  • Implement a scoring system based on escape time and resource usage.
  • Explore other AWS services, like DynamoDB for leaderboards or Lambda for serverless functionalities, to expand the game’s scope.
     

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