- Our Objective -

Survive Your Killer is a short game project built to try and help me understand the gameplay loop that drives Dead By Daylight, created during my studies at Cal State East Bay as part of the Fall 2025 Semester. Primarily inspired by the game mechanic of the generators from Dead By Daylight, which force players to expose themselves to risk of being spotted and attacked by the killer. Over time , as player skill develops their tolerance for how much they’ll risk being hurt for progression increases. Within my coursework for Interaction Design II, we were given a prompt for an open ended design project within p5.js with the caveat of heavily implementing randomization, and I decided to act on these thoughts fresh at the time in a top down horror project. The objective I set for myself would be to condense that risk and reward loop I enjoyed into a new, quick and fast format suited towards online browser play.

- Responsibilities -

For this academic assignment, it was fully my own work as a solo project, with the caveat that use of external art and music assets were alright with credit given.

• - Design the overall layout, choosing a simple square grid for clarity and control
• - Code and implement all game mechanics and systems within the p5.js Javascript library
• - Structure a risk/reward loop around players strategically reaching generators while avoiding the killer
• - Create original art, and implement external art/music assets with attribution

- The Process -

My initial work began sketching out a mental ‘layout’ for the space, I had an inclination early towards a simple square grid. This allowed me to define the enemy movement around that space, playing a practical game of tic-tac-toe as players would need to carefully navigate to tackle generators away from the killer, alongside allowing me to further meet the randomization requirement by shuffling generator placements. With this core idea in place, it was simply time to develop and iterate within code to make the project reality.

In developing the project, the generators came the easiest. I decided upon a progress bar that fills with proximity and fully resets on leaving before it is ‘complete’, to facilitate that behavior of trying to cling on that last second even when faced with a killer bearing down. In defining those killers however, I struggled as while randomization was a shoe in for me, their behavior to make them meaningfully distinct was eluding me.

I decided each killer should test a 'fundamental' game skill, the Gloomstalker would persistently chase and force the player to manipulate where they leave the killer. The Shadow, would invisibly sneak up and make the player reliant on other senses. The Pale with rapid teleportation, demands a quick reaction time. This allowed each killer to feel like a meaningful, and importantly distinct challenge on replay. My professor challenged me to create a superboss upon initial playtesting, and so I decided to go beyond just compiling these three traits together. Using the "Melting" of a prior work, I implemented a mechanic where the exit will lock up upon first reaching it. This forces a quick sequence to fix all generators akin, leaving players with one last lingering test of sheer speed to claim victory against the superboss.

In reflection upon this project, I take pride in its presentation, getting many fellow students to jump in to try out the project. I could see within those students a certain tension, a jumpiness achieving my initial vision of what I love about the risk and reward loop of games. In considering what i'd aim to do better on a later iteration, killers are currently involving a good amount of simple trial and error to learn quirks. While the death screen provides advice here, further reinforcers could enable more players to complete all bosses.

Github Repo Live Browser Game Link