UE4 Daily interviewed Eleftherios Kokkinakis on November 2nd of 2021. Below is the English version.

You can find the original interview in Russian here:
https://ue4daily.com/blog/westwood-shadows

So as I understood you are not only the Project Manager, but the founder of the studio? Could you tell me more about your background? How did you manage to gather a team and how did you decide to go in gamedev?

Our team currently consists of 5 core members in the production of the game and a few freelance collaborations including our music composer. I am the co-founder of the studio (Eleftherios Kokkinakis) and project manager for Westwood Shadows. 

Let me introduce the team before I go into how we all came together. I have worked at animation studios as an animator for productions from Ubisoft, Activision, and others. Lamprini Petsa is the second co-founder of the studio. We have been working on Westwood Shadows together from the beginning. She is working on our Level design and has no previous experience but shows great potential as you can see. Anastasios Chrysikos is working with us on the story and script of the game. Markos Resvanis is our Software Engineer who has worked on most of the code for the game and our newest member is Orfeas Eleftheriou who is working on AI systems.

The team started with me and Lamprini in 2019 when I was between animation productions in France and we made the first playable demo of Westwood Shadows. Through gaming communities, we met Markos who later on joined the team. Anastasios was already a friend when he decided to work with us in making the game and finally, a few months ago we noticed Orfeas’s work through gaming communities who also showed interest in joining the team.

Nowadays many developers choose the horror genre for their first project. Why did you choose horror with puzzle elements? Did you originally start with this concept? Perhaps you have a motivation to show the player something that you haven’t seen in other projects?

We don’t really believe that a couple of tags can do justice for a project. When you search for a game to play you might search for those tags to narrow down your options but that does not indicate the depth each production has, right? Same with Westwood Shadows, there is a great depth in our story and we have a task to put it out there in a way the player will experience and enjoy. Using interesting mechanics, well-designed visuals and animated cutscenes is only a way to enhance this experience of the player. Game development is such a beautiful and fulfilling thing when done right and we believe we are down the right path. Westwood Shadows always meant to have the same philosophy and we are every day one step closer to having the game we imagined.

What kind of references did you choose as the base to create a detective story? (Films, games, books, maybe)? How much time went to form the basis of the script?

We use references from everywhere, all the time! A game in development needs your full attention all the time even when you are not working on it. Reading books, watching films, or playing other games are not always enough. You need to examine the world and keep notes. How people behave in their everyday lives, what makes them angry and what keeps their interest. I always have a notebook next to me and even when I’m not working to keep notes of thoughts and ideas that might be a good addition to the game or even help the production.

How did you come up with puzzles for the game? Could you tell me about their random algorithm? What was the feedback of the players? Did they find them hard or not? Did you fix or will fix some puzzles during development?

We are all puzzle lovers here and we even do activities together like Escape Rooms. We are huge fans of the genre. After all the personal experience it was only a matter of time before we had our first puzzles. Adding random passwords each time a player starts the game is only so that the game be more interesting and have some sort of replayability. At least for the Prologue that was well received from the players. Regarding the difficulty of the puzzles we have had lots of feedback from the players and most of them were able to solve the puzzles without too much trouble. There is a small percentage of players who found the last two puzzles more difficult though so we decided to add some extra help without ruining the fun for the ones who were ok. That is the tricky part in game design after all, right? Finding that golden line that would satisfy everybody? We have already released 8 patches since the Prologue was launched and we constantly updating the game with more features. We are always open to feedback and we listen to everybody carefully. This is also why we have our discord channel where we discuss with the players directly.

As I saw in the demo, Westwood Shadows is focused more on atmosphere and tension than the typical presentation of fear (screamers, jumpscares, etc.) What techniques do you use to reach the horror atmosphere (visual. narrative, sound design)?

The final result of the game is a combination of pre-planning and game design methods we use to emphasize and deliver a desired mood for the game. For the final visual part, we count a lot on color and lighting references that are the first pillar to a solid foundation of the game. We choose carefully a color palette for each level and we use light to guide the player through the stages of the game. Horror is the backbone of the story we want to tell. Peter’s (and the player’s) journey in the full game is surreal and almost stream-of-consciousness and deals with reconciliation with the past and unsolved mysteries. Choosing horror and puzzle-solving, in that case, was a no-brainer. There is no need and we avoid using jumpscares as we believe that horror is a state of mind that keeps the player at the edge of their seat. Real horror doesn’t come from external stimuli – it comes from within. We feel It would be unfair to betray the mood we are building with a sudden scare. Instead, we wait for the perfect time when the player will “get caught” by their own fears. Plus there is a big part of the game that still hasn’t been introduced to the player. The Prologue of Westwood Shadows is a great introduction to the story but the player still has to confront the enemies of the game, the shadows! The battles with the shadows will be included in the main game of Westwood Shadows.

Why did you choose Unreal Engine and how does this technology help you in development? Were there any troubles or difficulties during development?

Our choice was made without hesitation back in the first days when we started with the development of Westwood Shadows. We needed a platform that would handle real-time graphics in a way that only Unreal Engine did and that could deliver a full project with visual coding for which Unreal Engine was known. Therefore we decided to build our project on Unreal Engine. Two years later I can say that we have no regrets and we are very excited about the results. Even those who transferred from other engines or those who had very little experience were able to find their way around and adapted easily to the engine’s tools and in extend, to our project’s workflow.

What is the situation with gamedev in Greece? Do you have any communities, events, or meetups? Tell us about them.

In spite of the fact that most of the people in this project are Greeks, the core team is located in Cyprus. This is a much smaller country but very similar to Greece. The gaming communities here are fewer but we try to keep in touch with most of them. Usually, the meetups happen in Greece which is a 2hour flight so we are unable to attend but we do when we get the option, online. After the situation with the virus especially, we have the opportunity to meet with great communities and have wonderful conversations with other professionals from the comfort of our base.

Could you tell me about your case with Epic Megagrant? How did your game come to be a recipient?

We applied back when we wanted to work on the game full time but had no resources to give up our main jobs. We met all the criteria to apply and so we did. We were chosen from Epic and we immediately left our day jobs to focus on developing the game. Epic has given us the opportunity to make this project the main goal and we appreciate this by working hard and listening to the players for feedback.

Tell about the studio’s future plans, when the release of Westwood Shadows, your expectations, etc.

We are very excited to have the Prologue on Steam, available to everyone for free. We keep getting feedback from the players and we use that to improve parts and pieces of the game. We intend to keep doing that until we publish the full game and even more then, hear what the players think about it.

When we get Westwood Shadows to be exactly as what we had in mind, then we want to publish on Sony PlayStation 5 and Xbox consoles. 

There are no other plans for now as our development tasks are our only priority.