Blood Rifleman (2026)

A game solo developed by Dylan Bassett

Dev Synopsis

I made Blood Rifleman over the course of 35 days as a challenge.

As with all of my solo projects, I did the programming and design myself. Most of the art for this project came from Fab. The sound effects were sourced from Soundly library.

I coordinated with contractors from around the world. This include voice actors, including the talented Matthew Curtis, and a composer, The Nomad Communion, from England.

I also did some voice acting myself and performed motion capture for the project using a Rokoko mocap suit.

Programming

All of the programming for this project was done in Blueprints.

The game has simple first-person gameplay. The player can walk, run, crouch, and jump. A majority of the game's programming is related to cutscenes and cinematic events, of which there are plenty.

One interesting detail in this project involved creating realistic delays between seeing and hearing distant rifle shots. Near the end of the game, the player moves through a snowstorm while a rifleman fires from somewhere in the fog. To enhance realism, I simulated the physics of sound travel: the player sees the muzzle flash first, and only seconds later hears the shot as the sound wave reaches them. The delay updates dynamically based on the player’s distance from the rifle, even though the sequence itself is scripted.

This made designing the level and the gunfire shot triggers a breeze - no extra programming, no manual sound delay setup.

All other events - the 'gold gem' getting shot and falling into the abyss, the wolves running in the snowstorm, the doe getting shot in the head - were simple in theory but complex to nail. They all involved general sound triggers and visual changes, but getting them to feel realistic and purposeful was a challenge. Naturally they each took a few iterations to get feeling right.

Art + Audio Direction

Nearly all of the art in this game came from the Fab marketplace.

I wanted this game to feel like a quintessential winter horror experience, so I leaned into blues and grays and other cold visual identities. The game's levels all share a color Look Up Table that tints shadows a deep blue, which is particularly noticeable in the bunker level. As a result, these levels ooze a feeling of cold and icy-ness.

At the end of the game, in the ice cave, the wall cracks apart, revealing a void of red, glowing dots. This stark contrast to the blue was purposeful, to provide a subtle layer of alienation against the rest of the experience.

Audio was an important part of the cinematic aspect. I used the sound library Soundly to achieve high-quality sound effects. These included bullet impact sounds on various surfaces, animal noises, footstep noises, and ambient noises.

One great audio detail is in the final level. The player finds themselves on a flat snowy field. In the distance, towering mountains surround them. Everything is tinted red. The player must walk towards a glowing white door in the distance as the main character performs a monologue. As the player walks, and as the monologue progresses, the footstep sounds gradually go from completely muffled to completely unmuffled. It's fairly subtle given the length of the transition, but definitely impactful, given that it's also synched to the weather; The weather transitions from snowstorm to perfectly clear as the monologue progresses.

Voice acting casting was fun. I was lucky to work with Matthew Curtis, who is known for being in projects in the FNAF series. David Ilchert performed the pivotal role of the Rifleman, giving us a great, guttural, scary voice. I performed some voice lines as the skeleton henchmen to the Rifleman.

I worked with a composer, The Nomad Communion, for this game. We worked closely on nailing a chilling aural atmosphere. One track that I'm most proud of directing is the bunker ambience. Heavily inspired by the great Penumbra: Black Plague, it's chilling, unnerving, and sounds like haunted ice. A great piece that gives a feeling of cold desolation. I highly recommend checking out the soundtrack, of which The Nomad Communion owns the rights. Please support his work!

Design

This project was very fun to design because of its given constraints. From the start I knew the focus would be cinematic narrative and world design. This meant planning cutscenes and events as if I were blocking out for a movie.

One scene that was the most difficult to nail was the bear attack. I didn't want it to be totally autonomous, so the player actually has control for a lot of the scene. They can still walk around freely as the bear approaches. They only lose control once it slashes at them.

The bear attack scene itself is brutal. After two swipes, the player lies on the ground facing away from the bear. It comes over to sniff, only to be startled by a distant gunshot. The bear then digs it's nails into the player's back - ripping clothing and skin. I used procedural camera animation to move the camera around, in a roughly vertical up/down path. Simultaneously, the screen rapidly flashes between bright and dark red as the pain is felt by the protagonist. The wonderful Matthew Curtis performs his heart out, screaming in agony.

Because the player can move around as the bear approaches (before it charges), the actual attack had to be programmed without relation to world location. While this added a slight layer of complexity, it was ultimately worth giving the player agency in the moment.

One other difficult scene was the ice cave sequence, as the player is dragged around by chanting skeleton cultists. The sequence lasts roughly 4-5 minutes and is filled with motion capture performance. I blocked out the scene and then donned my Rokoko mocap suit and recorded. I was able to test the animations in real time thanks to Rokoko, making the process easier.

The level design was very fun to make. The snowstorm sequence in particularly was exciting because it was linear. This let me precisely time out events, and craft environments perfectly suited for them. My favorite part of that sequence is the ice lake. Running across that lake while being shot at is quite thrilling.

The bunker's level design is more traditionally structured. There are a few goals laid about, all connected by a central room with a gold statue hanging above an abyss. That statue plays a pivotal role, and its placement in the hub room was important. The player has to pass by it several times, and each time they need to, something changes. It was a nice way to naturally force the environmental storytelling without telling the player where to go to see it.

Writing

The writing of Blood Rifleman was very special. The game, in essence, is about sudden loss. It's a case study of a man who simply cannot accept such an event, to extreme levels. In the end, it's about how we move on through life with acceptance and understanding of the mystery of fate and randomness.

I had a lot of fun writing the voice lines and pondering the story. The whole game is intentionally a metaphor, and can be abstracted so far away from it's primary basis (snowstorm, camping, lost wife, rifleman in the fog) and still be applicable. That is something I'm fairly proud of, given the time constraint and spontaneity of the project.