Out of Frame

First Person Horror Game

Role: Producer | Level & System Designer

10 Person | Jan 2025 – Apr 2025 | Unreal Engine 5

Introduction

Out of Frame is a first-person horror game. The player controls a student trapped in a nightmare of their school. To escape, the player must use a camera to photograph scenes and evidence of past bullying, uncovering the truth and pushing the story forward.

Taking photos can change the state of the environment. The game also features an AI ghost called Bully, a constant threat that can only be seen when the camera is turned on.

Overview

Situation

The team’s initial goal was to create a horror puzzle game centered around photography. The project needed not only to deliver a playable horror puzzle level, but also to clearly demonstrate level design thinking, mechanic teaching, and an immersive horror experience within a 10–15 minute gameplay slice.

The overall experience was built around photo-based puzzle-solving, resource management, and chase threats, requiring close coordination between level design and system design to support both player survival and progression.

Task

My responsibilities in this project focused on three main areas.

First, as the producer, I needed to lead the project from concept to implementation by managing a 10-person team across programming, art, design, and audio, while handling task allocation, resource coordination, and team communication.
Second, on the level design side, I needed to build a complete horror puzzle flow that would guide players through a progression from learning mechanics to gradually responding to threats, using environment, lighting, and terrain to direct player movement.
Third, on the systems side, I needed to integrate the camera mechanic, night vision, battery pickups, chase AI, and key interactive objects into a unified experience, while aligning the systems with the narrative so the game could maintain both tension and a clear escape-driven objective.

Action

At the production level, I led a 10-person team and was responsible for task breakdown, schedule management, resource coordination, and cross-disciplinary communication, helping move the project from concept into a playable state while establishing a more stable team workflow.

At the level design level, I designed all of the game’s levels and structured the short-form experience around a “learn – advance – challenge” pacing model. The tutorial phase introduced new mechanics through low-risk spaces, visual guidance, and simple interactions. The intermediate phase expanded the use cases of those mechanics through new combinations, testing the player’s understanding. The challenge phase created a climax by adding more restrictions, layered mechanics, and greater execution pressure. In terms of moment-to-moment flow, I designed the player experience to begin with waking up in an unknown space, gradually realizing they are trapped, beginning to think about escape, spotting a threat from a distance, receiving guidance on how to use the camera, and eventually learning how to rely on the camera system to escape. This structure allowed narrative setup, mechanic teaching, and threat escalation to connect naturally.

For space and interaction design, I used terrain, lighting, and environmental composition to shape player routes through the level, strengthening the pacing shifts between exploration, chase, and puzzle-solving, while also working with environment artists to build an immersive horror atmosphere. At the same time, I designed and integrated key level elements including horror AI chase sequences, the camera mechanic, night vision, battery pickups, camera-related interactive objects, trap doors, dreamlike environments, floating objects, and looping-space encounters. These elements gave the level clear gameplay layers while continuously creating psychological pressure.

For system design and narrative integration, I refined the relationship between resource management, camera mechanics, and escape strategy so that the camera functioned not only as an observation tool, but also as a direct part of the player’s survival decisions. By aligning the gameplay rules with the story background, I made the mechanics feel like part of the nightmare experience rather than isolated features. I also completed roughly 80% of the project’s core mechanic implementation, helping bring the core gameplay into a functional playable form.

Result

In the end, through the effort of the entire team, Out of Frame delivered a short-form experience centered on horror chase gameplay, exploration-driven puzzle-solving, and resource management, successfully integrating the camera, night vision, chase threats, and dream narrative into a unified gameplay framework.

Through the combined work of production, level design, and system design, the game achieved a coherent pacing arc and an immersive horror experience within a limited playtime, while also taking the team through a full development process from concept to core mechanic implementation. The project’s major art, audio, and gameplay features were all original, and the experience gave me end-to-end practice in project leadership, level design, and system integration.