Sub Terra is the side project I've been working on solo for the better part of a year. What started as an experiment to learn Unreal Engine is now an official first person psychological horror game.
This page chronicles the steps I took to get to this point, highlighting the primary obstacles and problems I faced.
The Backrooms
Going into 2024 the "Backrooms" trend was hitting it's peak. Characterized by an late 90s to early 2000s aesthetic, labyrinth-like maps and eerie, liminal spaces, The Backrooms crosses with many horror sub-genres. Some of these include psychological horror, analog horror, and found footage.
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Around September of 2024, I learned about Unreal Engine 5, and was eager to test out the functionalities of the engine. Among these functionalities was easy tools to create photo-realistic games. Having been a fan of the Backrooms aesthetic for a few years, I took this chance to create something backrooms related.
Training Grounds
When I was 11 years old, I begged my parents to buy me Game Maker Studio (GMS) on Steam. GMS was a simple 2D game engine with a built-in pixel-art creator/animator and a straight-forward drag & drop system. For the next 3 years I spent hours of each day making little platformer games and trying to learn GML, a coding language similar to javascript. As expected, I didn't understand much and gave up making larger games after a few years. The itch to create a game of my own never died down though, and 12 years later I finally have something that would make 11 year old me proud.
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Sub Terra started like a lot of games, as a test to learn a new engine. Before I could make anything photo-realistic in the editor, I had to have an idea of what I wanted to make. The Backrooms was an easy target, but I had grown tired of the same trends used in each backrooms rendition. I wanted to create something that strayed away from the tired, endless maze of beige carpet and florescent lights.
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For a little inspiration, I took a look at the "Official Backrooms Wiki", a Fandom page where users can submit fictional "levels" that exist in the Backrooms universe. I came across the page for Level 2 of the Backrooms.
Source: Level 0: "Tutorial Level" - Backrooms Wiki | Fandom
Source: Level 2: "Pipe Dreams" | Backrooms Wiki | Fandom
Pipe Dreams
"Level 2 is a vast network of interconnected utility tunnels, maintenance shafts, and rusting pipes." (Backrooms Wiki, Level 2)
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The "Pipe Dreams" aesthetic was just what I was looking for. A healthy balance of a realistic setting and a backrooms level. I refrained from looking too deep into the lore users created for this level since I wanted to keep the Backrooms lore relation to a minimum. Taking the maintenance tunnel idea, I found ample source material to work off of. While most maintenance tunnels were unkempt and overly creepy, one image I found really resonated with me.
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Something about the state of the tunnel in this image is so alluring. It's well maintained enough to not be creepy, but the chipping walls and claustrophobic pipes gave me a huge flood of inspiration which I wanted to start on right away.
The First Tunnel
Being completely new to Unreal Engine 5.4, I figured a good way to teach myself the program would be to take an image and recreate it in-engine. Making heavy use of Quixel's free material and mesh assets, I worked on and off beside numerous YouTube tutorials for the next few days. After dealing with the usual problems of learning a new program (I could rant about the inconsistency of Unreal Engine for hours, but this video sums it up better than I ever could), I had a recreated version of the Pipe Dreams tunnel.
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This was a huge moment for me. I had accomplished what​ I set out to do, and more importantly, I was inspired to make more. I quickly created a moodboard on Figma and started brainstorming.
A Flood of Ideas
Immediately after creating the tunnel, I wanted to make it playable. Once again turning to the wide world of YouTube I spent the next few days pulling my hair out learning how Unreal Engine handles Actors/Characters/Pawns/Controllers among other confusing aspects. Soon enough I had a working game that allowed the player to walk up and down the tunnel.
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Now that I had this basic functionality up, I dove deeper. Like any horror game, I needed a scary story, a entity to chase you, and a problem to solve. At this point, I had no intentions of releasing this game and was simply making it as a side project, so I took the easy route and followed some cliche horror game tropes. The player found themselves underground being chased by a monster and had to activate five power switches in order to escape (very unique, I know). But this was more than enough to keep me busy. I spent the next month learning hundreds of new ideas in order to create these aspects of the game.
Extra Rooms
I started by expanding the tunnel system, creating 90° turns, 45° turns, and T-shaped/4-way intersections to use in a maze. While I was happy with the result, I thought it felt empty. This led to me designing and filling five separate side rooms to scatter around the maze.
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Around this time I realized I would need custom models for the things that Quixel didn't have for free. I installed Blender and followed a few tutorials. After a few hours of fiddling with Adobe Substance Painter and Unreal's particle system Niagara, I had a functioning lever.
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As basic as it was, creating this lever and programming the counter gave me a huge boost of confidence. So I continued to expand, next up, a top floor.
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