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Every Breath
 

A short, 2.D narrative platformer game made in Unreal Engine 5
Role: Co-Lead Systems/Gameplay/Level Designer, Lead Narrative Designer, Writer, Co-Lead QA, Audio Lead, QA Lead, Producer

Every Breath is a 2.5D narrative survival platformer where players navigate their way out of an underground bunker and cave system while managing limited oxygen, time, and movement under pressure to bring their dying mother to see sunlight for the last time. Platforming and exploration are deliberately constrained to emphasize physical strain and scarcity, turning survival into a series of calculated tradeoffs on taking the longer but easier route, or the tougher but shorter route.

Oxygen functions not only as a survival resource but also as a narrative currency: choosing to speak with the player character’s mother, who has Alzheimer’s, through optional dialogue consumes precious air, forcing players to weigh emotional connection against the risk of running out. By tying storytelling directly to resource management, the game explores how care, memory, and survival collide when every decision has a cost. Depending on player decisions, they will reach their mission of arriving when the sun is still up, or when it has already gone down. 
Narrative/Design Overview
Game Design Journal
We started by designing a playable paper prototype of our game to see how players responded to resource management and plot points
Playtesting Data
Playtesting Focus & Results (Paper Prototype)
  • What we tested for
    • Whether oxygen as a shared resource created meaningful tension between survival and narrative choice
    • If players understood that talking with the mother consumes oxygen and treated dialogue as a deliberate tradeoff
    • How players navigated 2.5D platforming under pressure, especially when resources were scarce
    • Whether emotional engagement increased when narrative moments had mechanical consequences
  • What we found
    • Players clearly understood oxygen as a high-stakes resource and quickly adapted their behavior around it
    • The oxygen-cost dialogue successfully reframed conversation with the mother as a meaningful decision, not a passive story beat
    • Players reported heightened tension when choosing to engage with narrative moments despite the survival risk
    • Platforming felt more deliberate and cautious under oxygen pressure, reinforcing the intended pacing and tone
    • Overall, tying narrative interaction directly to survival mechanics increased emotional weight, player agency, and immersion
Our game design documentation showing changes made after the prototype, prototyping using FIGMA, game loops, audio design, and systems checklist
Our game macro document showcasing the creative vision for our project: mechanics, narrative & design goals, assets, and emotional beats.
SFX Checklist I designed and wrote so that sound and music hit the same emotional beats as gameplay design
We carried out formal bug and playtesting on a large screen with a facilitator and noted down results. We created a script for the facilitator and instructions for the playtester
Our overall  reports. We changed our usability report format as we got closer to the final iteration of our project so we could be more descriptive about issues and list them out clearly. Data is compiled here from our beta build as well.
Our final playtester survey data
We carried out 10+ playtests!

Playtesting Insights & Iteration Summary

  • What players reported

    • Oxygen scarcity was immediately understood as the primary source of tension and shaped moment-to-moment decision-making

    • Players felt strong emotional pressure when choosing whether to engage in dialogue with the mother, especially once they realized it consumed oxygen

    • Early playtests revealed confusion around when and how oxygen was being spent, particularly during narrative interactions

    • Some players initially treated dialogue as optional flavor rather than a mechanically meaningful choice

    • Platforming under resource pressure heightened caution and stress, but pacing occasionally felt uneven or overly punishing

  • What we changed

    • Clarified the oxygen cost of dialogue through clearer feedback and framing, reinforcing it as an intentional survival tradeoff rather than a hidden penalty

    • Adjusted oxygen tuning and consumption rates to better balance challenge with player agency, reducing frustration while preserving tension

    • Refined level pacing and platforming flow to ensure moments of narrative choice occurred at emotionally meaningful, but survivable, points

    • Reframed the mother’s dialogue to emphasize its emotional weight, reinforcing why players might choose to spend oxygen despite the risk

    • Iterated on UI and usability elements to better communicate resource state and consequences, based directly on usability feedback

  • Overall outcome

    • Later playtests showed stronger alignment between player behavior and design intent

    • Players made more deliberate, emotionally motivated decisions rather than optimizing purely for survival

    • The integration of narrative and resource management became clearer, resulting in higher emotional engagement and perceived agency
Screenshot 2026-01-30 at 3.27.50 PM.png
Example of production Checklist sheet we regularly updated for art, design, engineering, and narrative (writing)
Screenshot 2026-01-30 at 3.27.41 PM.png
Screenshot 2026-01-30 at 3.27.28 PM.png
everybreathnarrative
We chose to create a narrative system which rewarded the player for talking to their mother, as earlier playtests showed that players didn't see the use in doing so. We created tier 1 and tier 2 engagement rewards with a different catharsis type for each round of dialogue the player chose to engage in. Engaging in dialogue was oxygen-consuming, but rewarding in making the player feel like they were truly spending their last moments with their mother. We also tied the amount of times the player engaged with dialogue to the end of the game through systems balancing.

If the player engaged in dialogue with their mother, they would most likely reach an ending where they don't get to the sunset in time but their mother briefly remembers them before passing away. If the player spent less time talking to their mother, they reach the sunset in time, though with their mother having no memory of who they are. Since we didn't want players to feel like they had failed, we chose to still reward the player with their mother remembering who they are in the "sun down" ending, since it means they spent more time talking to her. In the "sun out" ending, the player would have spent less time talking to their mother, so she would not remember them. Though she will unclip her oxygen tank and give it to the player, cementing hope for the remainder of their journey. 

Dialogue was implemented by me in UE5 as well as oxygen cost balancing for dialogue.

We characterized the mother as a British Gen Z woman, who at this point in the world is now elderly. Her husband was an American Gen Z man, and therefore her son speaks with a mix of British/American dialect. We wanted the mother to reference everyday slang and objects from the 2000s, characterizing her through the memories of these elements. 
Tutorial Dialogue
Camp 2 Dialogue
Camp 1 Dialogue
Ending dialogue: sun out and sun down
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