R:EON

R:EON

A single-player first-person platformer-runner game, set in a hostile far-future dystopia. Navigate through the stark structures of a brutalist world and evade your chaser. Can you outrun it?

The title screen wrongly shows press any key to start. Press Space. More on known issues down below.

Why R:EON?

In R:EON, we prioritized user experience design. At every aspect of our development, whether visuals, code, or gameplay, we aimed to design everything with a user experience vision in mind. This vision came from our real-life experiences.

R:EON is born out of a feeling we have been having a lot recently: overwhelmed by life. Studies, work, chores, spending time with others, we get little time to spend time on our hobby, gaming. After a long day, sometimes all you want to do is sit and enjoy a game. Perhaps, try a new one? Yet, games are getting ever-complicated, requiring you to spend countless hours to fully experience the game. Why can't we have games like movies, which you can simply rent/stream, sit down and enjoy? We wanted to make a game, that gives us a full experience of a game without needing all the time investment. Pleasant aesthetics, smooth gameplay, and an interesting story. R:EON aims to hit all of these without requiring you to invest hours into learning new complex mechanics, game economies, or extensive lore. All you have to do is, sit and play. No reading*, no searching wikis, just pure playing.

*The only exception is tutorial texts. After the tutorial, no more text in the game.

Thesis Project

R:EON is developed by a team of 4 students -3 programmers, 1 open minor and no graphical artists - for our thesis & degree project, where we researched how can we communicate a narrative to the player in a fast-paced 3D environment without stopping the game. We utilized environmental storytelling and visual attention techniques. R:EON aims to tell a story without ever 'telling' you anything directly, everything is done through implicit storytelling. The development took about 4 months, where we developed the game and did the research at the same time. What do you think happened in R:EON?

Gotland Game Conference

We showcased our game at Gotland Game Conference 2024, where we got nominated for Best Level Design & Art Direction. Initially, our project was meant to be for the thesis only. So, some things were added only later after the decision to join the conference, in the last month. Unfortunately, these things received less time to be refined.

R:EON is not considered to be a fully finished game, but rather, a mostly polished vertical slice of a game.

Features:

• Main Menu
• Tutorial Level
• 1 Main Level
• Easy/Normal difficulty (it is a slightly difficult game by default)

It takes roughly 15 minutes to complete the game, depending on the skill of the player.

Gameplay

While R:EON is mainly designed with Keyboard & Mouse in mind, it does support controllers. However, the tutorial texts in the game do not change when controllers are used. No support for key binding, with limited sensitivity adjustment.

After downloading the file, unzip it and click on the executable.

Keyboard and Mouse / Controller

• Move
  • WASD / Left Joystick.
• Look
  • Mouse / Right Joystick.
• Jump
  • SPACE / A or Right Trigger (recommended)
• Air Dash
  • (in the air) SPACE / A or Right Trigger (Recommended)
• Wall Run
  • Press and Hold A or D. For example, if the wall is on the Right, then it is D.
  • Tilt and Hold L Joystick left or right depending on the side.
• Wall Grab / Ledge Grab
  • Hold W / L Joystick forward looking at the Wall. Will automatically climb if it is the ledge with sight on the surface of the platform.
• Slide
  • Press or hold Shift / B or Left Trigger (Recommended) to Slide. Sliding right before landing prevents Staggered.
• Staggered
• If you fall from high, you will get staggered and slowed down. KEEP MOVING to get out of stagger.
• Interact
  • Press E / Y

Extra:

• Pause / Settings
  • Press ESC/TAB or Right Menu button
  • You can find our recommendations below
• Difficulty
  • The entity that chases you is less ruthless if you play on Easy mode.
  • Can be adjusted at any time.
• Skipping Tutorial
  • Press 9 on main menu.
• Enter Easy Mode
  • Pressing Enter will automatically select Easy Mode.

Recommended Settings:

For the best experience we recommend the following:

• Resolution
  • We recommend 720p if you play on a 1080p or 2K monitor
  • 1080p if it is a 4K monitor.
  • Due to technical limitations, we are unable to pre-set it.
• All settings on Medium 
  • We recommend Medium at least for the most accurate visual experience.
• One exception: Global Illumination
  • We recommend this setting to be High for the best experience.
• Brightness / Contrast
• These were mainly added for visual accessibility.
• We do not recommend changing Contrast.
• Due to technical limitations, we cannot provide a reference. The preset for Brightness is what we intended, but can be adjusted depending on the monitor or light circumstances in the room.
• VSYNC
  • We recommend keeping it on.
  • Currently, there's no way to limit FPS due to technical limitations.

Known Issues:

• Main Menu incorrectly says Press Any Key. It is supposed to be SPACE only.
• Rarely, wall impact sound effect doesn't play when grabbing a wall, or wall running.
• The text for interacting doesn't disappear after interacting. Only, after interacting and looking away.
• Given the limited time, there are frame drops in some sections. We aimed at securing stable 60 FPS. Currently, there's no way to limit FPS due to technical limitations.
• Controllers cannot navigate the settings menu, requiring mouse for that.

Credits to in-game assets:
For all the human statues in the game, we re-modified and rigged the base mesh model from https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/low-poly-character-base-mesh-130eb07f553d49bd9012ab6717c897e8 with the license of CC 4.0 contribution.
We could like to give credits and thanks to the author for sharing this assets for free.

You are still reading? Woah. As a thank you, we included the narrative inside the downloadable file. Open the folder that you are not supposed to open :)