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Find or Be Found
Description
Find or Be Found is an asymmetric co-op horror game. Go on heists as a pair of burglars looking for the most valuable items in haunted houses. Locate the specific item to earn money and progress, but have a look out during your search because you're not alone.
In this asymmetric co-op horror game, one hacker and one robber must collaborate and communicate to locate cursed items. Search and survive to earn money and progress, but beware because you're not alone.
Project Summary
Game Type: Horror, Co-op multiplayer - First Person)
Genre: Online Co-op,
Platform: PC
Role: Level Designer
Development Tools Used: Unity , Miro, Git
Team Size: 7
Steam page : link
Gameplay
The core gameplay centers on communication and collaboration between two asymmetrical player roles: the Robber and the Hacker. While we can't directly control player behavior, we designed systemic tools to encourage coordination and deepen interaction through tension and strategy.
In-Game Communication & Surveillance:Pre-installed security cameras are placed strategically throughout select rooms in the mansion. These cameras serve as a vital observational tool for the Hacker, who relays information and warns the Robber of monster activity. Some cameras include flash mechanisms to temporarily stun the monster, but they're only in limited areas to maintain tension and balance.
Camera Interactivity & Monster AI Manipulation:Cameras can be destroyed intentionally, serving as a distraction or a tactical lure to draw monsters away from certain rooms. This adds a layer of strategic planning for players who want to manipulate enemy behavior indirectly.
Lighting Control System:The Robber relies on a flashlight, but the Cameraman can control the mansion’s internal lighting floor by floor using an electrical fuse box. Turning on ceiling and wall lights improves visibility for the Robber, reinforcing teamwork and pacing during exploration.
Purchasable Camcorder Tool:Players can acquire a portable camcorder that allows visual navigation and interaction inside the mansion, offering mobile surveillance and a limited use flash. This gives both players additional options to adapt and navigate encounters dynamically.
These mechanics were designed not only to heighten horror and immersion, but also to reinforce team based decision making and spatial awareness, allowing players to feel vulnerable yet empowered when working together.
Video
Core Design
This project is a cooperative horror experience inspired by Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes and Lethal Company, designed around asymmetric roles, tension, and communication.
Two players work together:
Robber : physically navigates and explores a haunted house to find specific items while avoiding monsters and environmental threats.
Hacker : supports remotely through a surveillance system, monitoring security feeds and consulting blueprints to guide the robber through the house.
Core Gameplay Pillars:
Asymmetric Co-op: Players have distinct roles requiring constant communication to succeed.
Exploration & Tension: The Robber must interpret the hacker's directions while avoiding a monster.
Information Relay: The cameraman uses static surveillance cameras, floorplans, to identify items, relaying this info under time pressure.
Replayability & Challenge: Item values and locations change per session. Monsters behave unpredictably, occasionally haunting the hackers's tools to maintain unease across both players.
Design Goals:
Build suspense and paranoia through limited visibility, role separation, and indirect storytelling.
Encourage tight communication and decision making under pressure.
Deliver layered objectives and interlocking gameplay mechanics that emphasize team synergy.
Level design process
I joined the team as a Level Design Intern and quickly took ownership of the level creation process, working closely with the team to align with the project's design goals. Prior to my involvement, the game featured large, handcrafted haunted house layouts. When I joined, a new modular level tool had just been completed,this tool allowed rooms and key gameplay objects (such as cameras, doors, and rooms) to be saved and dynamically spawned during gameplay.
This marked a significant design shift toward procedural and modular level design.
Working collaboratively, we defined standardized room boundaries to ensure each space could snap cleanly to a grid, avoiding misalignment and enabling a flexible, procedural room layout system.
My responsibilities included:
Designing and building a wide range of modular rooms (e.g., staircases, lobbies, kitchens, bedrooms, common areas).
Starting from greybox blockouts to full set dressing, ensuring both gameplay functionality and visual storytelling.
Collaborating with artists to source appropriate assets and define room themes.
Constructing unique, interconnected floor layouts with hallways, loops, and room variation to support both exploration and tension.
The result was a library of modular, reconfigurable environments that support dynamic house generation and diverse gameplay scenarios, enhancing replayability and horror pacing.
Technical Breakdown
As the level designer on our co-op horror game project, I took full ownership of the game's modular level system, from initial room creation to full mansion layouts. My focus was on crafting memorable, suspenseful spaces that supported our asymmetrical gameplay and reinforced atmosphere through smart spatial planning.
Upon joining the team, the game transitioned to a modular level design system where each room could be individually authored and procedurally assembled. I helped standardize room sizes and alignment based on a grid system, ensuring rooms could be connected seamlessly without offsets or collision issues. Each room was crafted from the ground up, greyboxing, set dressing, and final placement within mansion layouts.
Key Design Priorities
When I joined, existing rooms had inconsistent scales, doorframe placements, and dimensions, making modular assembly prone to visual offsets and connection issues. A redesign initiative to standardize all rooms using a strict grid-based system, for example a 3×3 room (9m x 9m) would have doorframes aligned precisely at 2.8m from a wall edge, ensuring seamless alignment across rooms without spatial gaps or overlaps. This system ensured every door could connect cleanly to the next, regardless of room type or layout complexity.
Introductory Rooms:I placed heavy emphasis on the first rooms players encounter to establish mood and scale. These entry points feature grand architecture, double height spaces, overhanging balconies, dramatic pillars, and split staircases to convey the sheer size and vertical complexity of the mansions right from the start.
Interconnectivity & Flow:Mansion layouts were designed to web outward from central rooms. I engineered loops, dead ends, and shortcuts to create dynamic navigation paths while maintaining tension. Careful attention was given to line of sight, lighting, and how each room’s types (e.g., kitchen, study, living room) supported both gameplay objectives and narrative immersion.
Scripting & Gameplay Enhancements
Alongside my design responsibilities, I also contributed light scripting work to enhance gameplay:
Jumpscare Sequences:Authored minor event scripts to trigger jumpscares at specific timings (e.g., TV, Fireplace, Beds), helping elevate tension without relying on randomness.
Custom Gadget: Rubber Duck Designed and scripted a purchasable item, a rubber duck decoy which players can use in emergencies. It acts as a stun device: when shoved into the monster’s mouth, it briefly incapacitates them, giving the Robber time to escape. This added a humorous yet functional twist to our gadget system.
Problem Solving
The original layouts suffered from poor interconnectivity due to most rooms having only one entrance/exit and mismatched scales, making it impossible to form non-linear paths or loops. After attempting to build a layout with interconnected rooms and confirming it wasn’t feasible, I researched real mansion blueprints and architectural references, noticing consistent alignment in door placement and room structure. I proposed a complete redesign using a standardized grid and shared doorframe positions, which the team agreed to implement. This not only enabled flexible layout assembly and better pacing but also gave rooms more believable structure, improving both level flow and visual immersion.
Feedback / playtesting
I actively collected and acted on player feedback through structured surveys and playtest reports, using that data to guide level design iteration. This included redesigning or adjusting rooms, relocating object spawns, modifying camera positions, and refining set dressing to improve gameplay flow and clarity. I also monitored live gameplay from streamers and content creators to observe real-time issues, glitches, and player behavior, giving me valuable insight into pacing, layout readability, and emergent problems. These findings helped me make targeted, impactful adjustments to improve the player experience.
Reflection
I’ve learned a tremendous amount during my internship, especially from working on my first published online co-op multiplayer game. It was an exciting challenge to design modular and procedural levels, and I gained hands on experience with the full pipeline: from greyboxing and set dressing to implementing gameplay elements like spawn objects, cameras, doors, and hiding spots. Assembling rooms into functional, interconnected layouts and refining them through iterative playtesting and feedback taught me a lot about agile development. This process made it a truly valuable and inspiring learning experience for me.
