Half Away is my first released game, started as a student project and later brought to release. As Game Director, I also covered multiple roles: Game Designer, Technical Director, 3D Artist, Social Media Manager and more, to ensure its completion in time.
The game is a narrative puzzle-adventure inspired by Slavic and Japanese folklore. Its design goal was twofold: deliver a world rich with lore and build around a unique core mechanic, Resonance, the power to hear hidden voices in every object, NPC, and puzzle. This ability drives both the storytelling and progression, as even lore collectibles are uncovered through it.
Built as a short but meaningful experience, Half Away features puzzle-solving tied to Resonance, branching decisions, achievements, and four different endings.
Half Away is my first released game, started as a student project and later brought to release. As Game Director, I also covered multiple roles: Game Designer, Technical Director, 3D Artist, Social Media Manager and more, to ensure its completion in time.
The game is a narrative puzzle-adventure inspired by Slavic and Japanese folklore. Its design goal was twofold: deliver a world rich with lore and build around a unique core mechanic, Resonance, the power to hear hidden voices in every object, NPC, and puzzle. This ability drives both the storytelling and progression, as even lore collectibles are uncovered through it.
Built as a short but meaningful experience, Half Away features puzzle-solving tied to Resonance, branching decisions, achievements, and four different endings.
Organize and coordinate a 40-person team of artists, designers, and programmers.
Structured the workflow with HacknPlan (similar to Trello/Asana) to manage tasks and progress, and assigned role-specific leads to keep communication clear and responsibilities defined.
Define a strong selling point, consistent art style, and narrative logic to guide the project.
Design puzzles around sound while keeping the game accessible to players with hearing impairments.
Keep puzzles simple and solvable through trial and error, add subtle visual clues for guidance, and focus the core experience on narration rather than pure puzzle difficulty.
Make the game’s lore interactive and build a gameplay loop that keeps the narrative experience fun.
Added journal pages collected via Resonance on objects, integrated dialogue choices that unlock new areas, and tied decisions to the four possible endings.
Deliver a final boss that feels like the pinnacle of the game, leaving players with both the weight of choice and the satisfaction of completion.
Designed an interactive spirit-form battle where players answer questions and make choices. The fight emphasizes ethics and narrative stakes, letting players influence their own fate and their brother’s, while maintaining a cool, atmospheric gameplay moment.
Manage the game’s presence on Steam, social media, and at multiple conventions.
Created trailers, a captivating store page, and physical assets like banners, while coordinating social channels and preparing for live events to maximize visibility.
Built around an oneiric Spirit World with varied palettes, mascottable characters, and a particular game mechanic, all tied together by a mysterious lore.
Challenge
Solution
Resonance is the core mechanic, designed to be both narrative and gameplay driven. With a single input, players can interact with almost any object in the world. Doing so triggers a unique sound tied to that object while unlocking a corresponding diary entry, expanding the game’s lore piece by piece.
Used near objects, Resonance reveals their presence through layered sounds, creating both puzzles and discovery moments. Using it also slows Juna’s walk and run speed, turning the act of listening into a deliberate, situational choice that can shape puzzle design.
The goal was to build an “out of the box” system usable everywhere, solving puzzles, uncovering secrets, finding collectibles, or discovering easter eggs. By tying lore and mechanics to sound, Resonance becomes the core gameplay loop, blending exploration, storytelling, and interaction.
The Resonance
Resonance is the core mechanic, designed to be both narrative and gameplay driven. With a single input, players can interact with almost any object in the world. Doing so triggers a unique sound tied to that object while unlocking a corresponding diary entry, expanding the game’s lore piece by piece.
Used near objects, Resonance reveals their presence through layered sounds, creating both puzzles and discovery moments. Using it also slows Juna’s walk and run speed, turning the act of listening into a deliberate, situational choice that can shape puzzle design.
The goal was to build an “out of the box” system usable everywhere, solving puzzles, uncovering secrets, finding collectibles, or discovering easter eggs. By tying lore and mechanics to sound, Resonance becomes the core gameplay loop, blending exploration, storytelling, and interaction.
To ensure clarity and consistency, I designed a color system that ties directly into both mechanics and narrative. Colors are not just aesthetic, but a language the player learns to read across the whole game.
Each type carries a clear meaning:
Blue marks listenable objects, unlocking lore pages and enriching worldbuilding.
Red signals blocked or inactive elements.
Green is tied to teleports, puzzles, and transitions between areas.
Gold-orange, the game’s core identity color, highlights puzzles and key points of interest.
These cues appear through lighting, runes, and environmental design, then extend into the in-game diary, where the same palette highlights important words. The result is a consistent visual language that guides the player intuitively, blending color theory with gameplay.
Color Direction & Theory
To ensure clarity and consistency, I designed a color system that ties directly into both mechanics and narrative. Colors are not just aesthetic, but a language the player learns to read across the whole game. Each type carries a clear meaning:
- Blue marks listenable objects, unlocking lore pages and enriching worldbuilding.
- Red signals blocked or inactive elements.
- Green is tied to teleports, puzzles, and transitions between areas.
- Gold-orange, the game’s core identity color, highlights puzzles and key points of interest.
These cues appear through lighting, runes, and environmental design, then extend into the in-game diary, where the same palette highlights important words. The result is a consistent visual language that guides the player intuitively, blending color theory with gameplay.
