Janine Rodriguez
Level Designer
Project Immortus
Date: Jan 2026 - April 2026
Team Size: 1
Roles: Designer, Producer, Writer, Director, Programmer
Game Engine: Unity
Other Software: Illustrator, Photoshop, Blender
Narrative Design Process
Plot
The idea for Project Immortus came after my first concept was rejected for being too complex and obscure. I knew I wanted to make a 3D interactive fiction with voice-acted dialogue, but I was stuck on the setting for a while. I am not a 3D artist, so I was limited to using free assets I found online. At first, I decided on a hospital, but felt uninspired by it. I was browsing assets on the Unity Asset Store when I found a morgue asset pack. I thought perhaps the setting could be a medical research facility that has a morgue. I was much more inspired by this setting.
I started brainstorming ideas for this new setting and, naturally, I thought of zombies. This led me to a concept where a zombie wakes up in the morgue of a research facility. The goal of the game was to uncover a secret government project researching methods of immortality while controlling your zombie cravings. As a backup, I also came up with the idea of a medical technician trapped in a simulation while an AI voice tries to guide them out. I pitched the ideas to my professor. He liked the zombies from the first idea and the AI from the second, so we combined them to create the concept that would become Project Immortus.
Early teaser
Characters
It's not unusual for me to write the characters before structuring the entire story, and such was the case in this project. My professor was the one who suggested the zombie researcher inject themselves, and I thought, "What would the motive for that be?" So I came up with the character of Dr. Adhari, a researcher dedicated enough to become her own human test subject. It's almost a mad scientist archetype, but dulled down to maintain relatability.
I was thinking about how to write an AI who could act as a foil to Dr. Adhari and thought of one of my favorite robot-type characters, Janet from The Good Place. Janet is made to be pleasant since she's basically heaven's Alexa, but she's stolen by a demon and unknowingly placed in a psychological torture chamber. I loved the idea of a perpetually positive force in a chaotic and grim setting. I started writing some sample dialogue, and the character of Ally just flowed from there.
Early Dialogue Samples From the Audition Form
Level Design Process
My level design process started with collecting references for the facility. I created a mood board to guide the visual style I wanted for the environment. Even before the story’s conception, I had my mind set on a liminal type space—an unsettling, bare atmosphere that isn't outright scary. I collected examples I liked and included photos of real research facilities. As you can see, the show Severance was a huge inspiration.
Layout
Next, I planned the first level's gameplay flow to lay out the key items and areas that I should design around first. Then, I started sketching some rough layouts. There were a couple of iterations until I ended on the design I used in the game. As you can see, I had more rooms planned for the facility but after scoping down to a demo, the Archive Room ended up as the only level.
The left is a layout design for the full facility before I scoped down. The right is a later sketch of the Archive Room which is closer to the final design in the game.
