Devlog – The Making of Lockdown

By: Daniyal Durrani – Game Artist & Developer   
Project Type: First-Person Narrative Survival Simulator (short-form, emotional gameplay)
Engine: Unity
Platform: PC (Windows), Mac Linux  
Status: Near-final prototype

Development Timeline:

- Concept & early sketches: February 2025
- Prototype development begins: March 2025
- Core mechanic + interaction systems: March-April 2025
- Art pass + lighting system integration: April 2025
- Playtesting, iterations & polish: April 2025
- Final tweaks & planned demo release: May 2025

Concept: Creating Stillness in Play

Lockdown is a short interactive narrative game about surviving a week of isolation by engaging in simple, everyday routines. Players inhabit a small bedroom space and must complete basic tasks like eating, napping, attending online classes, and more, to keep their mental and physical health in check.

There’s no dramatic conflict or high-stakes crisis. Instead, the game focuses on the quiet effort of making it through the day, one action at a time. Players must find a sustainable rhythm, navigating feelings of stagnation, restlessness, and fatigue while trying to stay grounded through repetition and care.

Inspired by the global impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, Lockdown reflects the personal experiences of many students, as well as the universal struggles of isolation, time management, and maintaining health while confined indoors. The first-person perspective heightens the feeling of immersion and offers a more personal connection to the gameplay experience. The game highlights how even the most ordinary choices can feel weighty, and how survival sometimes means simply showing up for yourself.

Inspiration Games:

Lockdown draws emotional and structural inspiration from narrative games like Kind Words, A Short Hike; games that prioritize mood, introspection, and emotional resonance over conventional win/lose objectives. Games like A Game About Digging a Hole influenced the meditative pacing and subtle existential tone of Lockdown, encouraging players to embrace stillness and repetition as meaningful experiences. Meanwhile, Streamer Life Simulator inspired the structure of managing routines and balancing basic needs within a confined environment. Both titles helped shape Lockdown’s focus on internal rhythms, low-pressure progression, and ambient storytelling.

Visual Language & Aesthetic Decisions

The visual development of Lockdown leaned heavily into stylized asset elements and cozy, lived-in environments. I focused on creating a space that felt intimate and familiar, drawing inspiration from storybook aesthetics, moody lighting, and nostalgic details.

Some key design choices:

• Limited palette: Muted tones reflect the emotional tone while ensuring visual harmony.
• Purposeful objects: Every item in the room is purposefully used to support narrative progression through interaction and context—whether it’s a coffee mug, food item, a book, or a window left ajar.
• Light and shadow: Soft animations and lighting shifts indicate the passage of time and internal states.

To simulate in-game time and control dynamic lighting, I incorporated an asset that manages the day/night cycle. This tool not only adjusts the lighting but also shifts the mood and atmosphere in real-time, reinforcing the passage of time within the confined space of the game. I used a variety of pre-made assets to populate the space, each chosen for its ability to evoke warmth and familiarity:

• Persian rugs used for texture, comfort, and creating that homely feeling.
• Books and stationery help enhance the sense of a lived-in space.
• Mug/food items and other objects to highlight small, personal moments which contribute to the overall homely ambiance.
• A calendar was added to track the passage of time, counting up the days as they go by in sync with the simulated in-game time. This reinforces the rhythm of the player’s daily routine and enhances the feeling of endurance throughout the week.

Tools & Workflow:

- Unity (2022.3.50f1 LTS) – primary game engine - Unity’s Starter Assets - FirstPerson Controller Asset - Day-Night System with Events from the Unity Asset Store - Audacity – for editing voice/narration clips - Canva – Some UI work - Google Docs – development planning and writing

Gameplay & Interaction Design

At its core, Lockdown is about narrative and environmental storytelling through interaction. Players explore a confined space, managing routines to preserve wellbeing by interacting with familiar items and partaking in everyday tasks of a university student during the pandemic.

Core mechanics include:

• Simple press-to-interact mechanics allow players to engage with everyday objects and available tasks.
• Maintaining personal physical and mental health, through said tasks and interactions
• Subtle changes in the space based on the time of the day, i.e. lighting

Early in development, I considered implementing light puzzle mechanics or branching choices, but through concept iteration and prototyping I realized they interrupted the pacing and diluted the core intention. So I made a conscious pivot – from "doing and solving" to "noticing and feeling."

This shift allowed the experience to breathe—letting players move through the world at their own pace and draw their own emotional conclusions as they go through a week of a monotonous life.

Pivots & Iteration

Throughout development, the game went through quite a few major pivots and refinements:

Scope Refinement

I originally envisioned a much larger house setting with more rooms and story arcs, which included a bathroom, a workout/exercising room, a living room, and virtual NPC interactions (family and friends). But after initial prototyping, I realized that limiting the space allowed for deeper detail and focus. One room became a world in itself, which was true to the experience of many during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns.

Narrative Reworking

The narrative for Lockdown evolved significantly throughout development. Initially, the concept was to explore a more expansive storyline, taking players through the events leading to the strict lockdowns. The original idea had players experience a rich, multi-branching narrative over a longer period than a week, allowing for deeper engagement with the story and its characters. However, as development progressed, I pivoted to a more focused experience—emphasizing simple survival tasks to maintain physical and mental well-being during the lockdown.

While the game no longer features a complex narrative arc, the emotional foundation still draws heavily from personal experiences during the pandemic and the shared stories of those close to me who faced similar challenges. The narrative now weaves through interactions and simulated time that showcases the pace at which time passes, offering players brief glimpses into the emotional landscape of isolation. This approach allows the player to piece together their own interpretation of the experience through subtle interactions and reflections.

Playtesting & Feedback

Playtesting played a critical role in shaping the final experience. Some key insights and reactions included:

• “I didn’t know what to do at first…”
  • Introduced a gentle onboarding moment via a panel with narrative context and control instructions to ease the player in without breaking immersion.
• “This made me feel things I didn’t expect.”
  • Reaffirmed the value of subtlety in narrative delivery. Letting players find their own rhythm worked.
• “I want more to explore.”
  • This was challenging. I chose to expand depth (adding more meaning to fewer objects) instead of breadth (adding more objects), although the ultimate vision for the project is to incorporate both.

Challenges Faced

Every project comes with friction points. Here were the big ones:

• Scope Management: 
  • Trimming ideas was difficult. I had to be ruthless about what served the emotional experience vs. what was just “cool to include”.
• Tone Consistency: 
  • Making sure art, assets, and writings all carried the same emotional weight without clashing.
• Interaction Clarity: 
  • Players needed just enough feedback to understand they’d triggered something, without relying on step-by step instructions in a tutorial-like environment.
• In-Game Time and Lighting System: 
  • One of the significant challenges was integrating a lighting asset that simulated in-game time and controlled the day/night cycle. This required a deep understanding of Unity’s lighting system and asset management. Adjusting environmental lighting in real-time based on the simulated time was essential for maintaining the immersion but required careful tuning to balance performance with aesthetic quality.
• Calendar and Time-Tracking System: 
  • Implementing the calendar that tracks the passage of days in sync with the in-game time proved challenging. I had to ensure that the system was not only updated in real-time but also synchronized seamlessly with other gameplay elements, like health levels and task completion. Debugging issues related to time progression and event triggers required iterative testing.
• Asset Management and Optimization: 
  • Using a variety of pre-made assets (such as furniture, books, and devices) meant careful consideration of how they fit within the game’s overall aesthetic and performance constraints. Ensuring that these assets didn't cause frame rate drops or disrupt gameplay was a consistent challenge, especially with multiple items and animations in the same scene.
• Interaction and Routine Systems: 
  • The core mechanic of completing daily tasks such as eating, napping, and working – required a simple yet reliable interaction system. Creating a balanced feedback loop for these actions to ensure players felt engaged without overwhelming them was challenging. I also had to ensure that mental and physical health stats updated correctly and were tied to the player's interactions.

What’s Next?

Lockdown is currently in a polished prototype state, playable on PC. The current goal is to finalize the demo and begin expanding the core gameplay loop. Planned features include new daily activities like playing video games, exercising, and virtually interacting with other students, which will add variety and realism to the in-game routine.

I also aim to explore how player choices—such as the order of tasks, engagement with optional activities, or neglecting routines—can influence both the progression of the day and the character’s mental state. This will introduce greater narrative depth, emotional nuance, and replayability, allowing players to shape their experience in meaningful, personal ways.

I’m also interested in exploring whether Lockdown could be expanded—perhaps as a series of short interactive stories, or as part of a larger anthology project about emotional spaces.

Final Thoughts

This project has reminded me that games don’t need to be loud and action-filled to be powerful. Stillness, care, and attention are design tools just like any others.

In making Lockdown, I found myself slowing down—not just in gameplay, but in how I created, wrote, and reflected. I hope that players who experience it will feel seen, safe, or simply understood, even for a few quiet minutes.

Thanks for reading.

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If you'd like to stay updated or explore more of my work, you can find me at [dayynnn.itch.io || linkedin.com/in/mddurrani252]