Liminight is a psychological horror game developed in Unity as part of a school project at ESIEE Paris. The player explores an unsettling liminal environment with no UI, where sound and visual atmosphere take priority over direct action.

Technologies used: Unity, C# (Visual Studio), Blender (Modeling), Final Cut Pro (Video editing).
Date: April 2025

LIMINIGHT Report

Course: 3D Computer Graphics (Unity I) Professor: Badr Tajini School: ESIEE Paris

TEAM

Aymeric LETELLIER

Allan SEDDI

E3FI - 1I - 2024/2025

Oral presentation slides

📄 View slides (PDF)

Gameplay Video 🕹️

Identity sheet

Game name: Liminight
Genre: First-person psychological horror
Game engine: Unity
Visual style: Degraded realism, VHS aesthetic, PS2-like grain
Target audience: 16+ / fans of narrative and immersive horror
Inspirations: Silent Hill, Fear to Fathom, Resident Evil 4 (PS2), the Backrooms

🔑 Keywords: psychological, liminal, horror, analog, immersive, narrative

Rating: PEGI 16

1. Introduction: A narrative experience about trauma and memory

Liminight is a first-person psychological horror game developed in Unity. It offers an immersive experience combining liminal aesthetics, fragmented storytelling, and altered-perception mechanics. Inspired by works such as Silent Hill, Fear to Fathom, Resident Evil 4 (PS2), and the Backrooms mythos, the game drops the player into an abandoned reality where horror does not come from visible monsters, but from solitude, doubt, loss of bearings, and internal trauma.

The project aims to reconcile artistic expression with narrative intent by staging a traumatic loop within the fictional framework of an experimental protocol called MIRAGE. Every visual, audio, and interactive element contributes to the progressive mental reconstruction of the main character, who is both a medical test subject and the player’s embodiment. Liminight explores video games as a sensory, symbolic, and introspective medium.

2. Artistic intentions

Liminight aims to provoke a deep and uncomfortable feeling. The game is designed to build a persistent, latent anxiety by playing on solitude, emptiness, disorientation, and doubt. The player is deliberately deprived of stable landmarks and must move forward through hostile, blurry environments without direct guidance, relying only on altered perception.

Beyond immediate fear, the game seeks to express more intimate emotions: loss of self, denial, repression, and also the desire to understand and rebuild. The player is invited to face their weaknesses, not by denying or fleeing them, but by confronting them head-on, in a logic of acceptance.

The fictional MIRAGE protocol framing the game’s universe acts as a metaphor for a therapeutic process. It traps the main character, “Subject XX,” in a mental loop where each failure, each reset, and each discovered fragment contributes to a slow path toward resilience. Destroying the MIRAGE system does not represent an external liberation, but an internal reconstruction. The game embraces its symbolic function: delivering a psychological experience where accepting one’s trauma becomes the necessary condition for possible healing.

3. Aesthetic and technical choices

The choice to remove any HUD from the earliest design phases was made to strengthen immersion. By eliminating any distracting graphic elements, the player’s attention stays fully focused on the environment, its sounds, its textures, and the subtle anomalies that appear within it. This lack of UI fosters a direct, almost organic connection between the player and the world.

Initially planned, the integration of a VHS effect or PS2-like visual grain has not yet been implemented. The game’s visuals remain sober and realistic, but that neutrality helps highlight moments of rupture: occasional glitches, lighting instabilities, sudden blur, or color saturation spikes. The game uses these contrasts to build discomfort progressively without relying on constant filters.

As for sound design, it is one of the pillars of the game’s sensory experience. The soundscape is designed as an immersive envelope shaping the player’s emotions. Every noise, every breath, every silence contributes to an underlying tension. Sound is used here as a tool for mental imbalance and implicit storytelling: it suggests presences, absences, and diffuse threats. It makes the space exist beyond what is visible.

4. References and inspirations

Liminight draws its influences from several major video game works, including Silent Hill, Fear to Fathom, Resident Evil 4 (PS2), and the Backrooms aesthetic. These games and universes share an approach to horror based on suggestion, discomfort, and sensory instability. What connects them, and what Liminight retains, is not spectacle or jump scares, but their ability to install a lasting sense of dread through subtle means: silence, distant noises, incoherent spatiality, blurred temporality, and altered perception.

The concept of liminal space is central: empty transitional places that feel almost outside time, evoking collective memory and existential unease. They create a form of mental drifting for the player. In these spaces, the player experiences a paradoxical tension: they are alone, yet fear they might not be. This constant uncertainty lies at the heart of the Liminight experience.

However, the game does not aim to imitate these references. Where Silent Hill or Fear to Fathom evoke fear or fascination through a descent into nightmare, Liminight pursues a different purpose. It is not only about discomfort, but about opening a path toward reconstruction. The game embraces a symbolic and therapeutic function: it confronts the player with fears and fractures within a fictional frame structured like a mental resilience process. In that sense, Liminight positions itself not as a simple horror work, but as an experience of inner transformation.

LORE

Who is Subject XX?

Subject XX is the ultimate patient of an ultra-secret experimental project called MIRAGE, a program developed to treat human trauma through extreme sensory immersion combined with recursive psychological simulations. Subject XX is anonymous, with no clear memory of their past or precise identity before being admitted into the program. Everything the player discovers throughout the game comes from subtle clues, found documents, and their own fragmented memories.

Why is Subject XX special?

Subject XX stands apart from the other subjects for several reasons:

Exceptional Resistance to Simulations: Unlike previous patients, Subject XX developed an unusual ability to recognize and remember simulation loops. With each repetition, they partially retain memories from earlier cycles, progressively breaking the boundary between simulation and reality.
Multi-layer Experience: Subject XX is the only one to have undergone all experimental protocols simultaneously. This makes them both an exceptional case and potentially dangerous for the project’s stability. Their ability to face and integrate all fears and trauma at once is an anomaly the program’s creators did not anticipate.
Threat and Hope: As the only subject approaching total awareness, Subject XX represents both:
- A threat, because they may be able to sabotage the system from within permanently.
- A potential ultimate success, since destroying the system is paradoxically the program’s main therapeutic objective. This symbolic act would represent the final integration of all trauma.

Why do we play as Subject XX?

By embodying Subject XX, the player becomes a direct actor in this inner struggle. Each decision subtly influences the resolution or persistence of psychological trauma, leading the player to explore a central theme:

Acceptance as the ultimate form of liberation.

The player’s experience therefore becomes a powerful metaphor for the cyclical nature of trauma and the need to face it consciously in order to truly heal.

Level -10: “Awakening”

The elevator crashes. Black screen. Ragged breathing. The player wakes up alone on floor -10 of an old experimental asylum/hospital.

Cutscene creation

The sequence opens inside an apparently normal elevator cabin: the display panel shows 30. After a brief tense silence, the elevator begins a steady descent as the numbers scroll calmly down to 25.

At that floor, something feels wrong: 25 flickers nervously while an electrical crackle runs through the cabin. Then everything suddenly flips: the lights start flickering chaotically, sparks burst from the panels, and the elevator drops into free fall.

During the descent, the counter plummets faster and faster (progressive acceleration). LEDs switch on and off at random, heightening panic. Finally, the cabin slams to a stop at floor −10: the lamps stay off, leaving only silence and the glowing red −10 in the darkness.

Importing a realistic elevator model with high-resolution textures and appropriate metallic materials to reflect lighting in a believable way.

Careful setup of visual elements: texture adjustments for a photorealistic render, a lighting system with primary and secondary point lights, shader setup for metallic and reflective surfaces, reflection tuning, precise camera settings to capture the claustrophobic mood of the scene, then integration and application of the behavior scripts.

Elevator

Code 💻

Code to handle light flickering and the free-fall floor counter (see the Code tab for the ElevatorFall.cs file).

Video editing 🎥 (Final Cut Pro)

Editing timeline

Final result 🎬

Result video

Level objective

Escape floor -10 by repairing the electrical system and obtaining an exit key. The player must solve puzzles, collect key items, and deal with entities trying to prevent escape. The player’s mental state is affected throughout the level.

General structure:

Starting area - Crashed elevator
- Mechanic: As soon as the player steps out of the elevator, the lights turn off after a few steps, creating immediate tension.
- Immediate goal: The player must pick up the flashlight (before being able to move forward in the dark).
Zone A - Basement
- The player moves through a corridor and dark rooms while hearing terrifying sounds (footsteps, scratching, distant whispers).
- Mechanic: The player must find key items such as keys in the morgue.
Zone B - Floor
- The player explores and learns they must find the maintenance room to insert fuses and restore power.
- They discover that 3 fuses are required and must find them across different parts of the level.
Zone C - Archives / Control office
- The player explores messy offices, collects documents, and finds clues that explain more about the experiment and the objectives.
Zone D - Morgue
- The player finds a corpse and collects an access card needed to enter another room.
- They must also restore the power.

Subtle events

Fleeting shadows: Entities briefly appear at the edges of rooms but vanish quickly when the player tries to look directly at them.
Unsettling sounds: Footsteps or whispers inside the walls to create a constant feeling of being watched.
Abnormal reflections: In mirrors or glass, the player may see distorted silhouettes or shadows.
Mental distortion effect: Some rooms become blurry, or colors warp slightly as the player’s mental health decreases.

Puzzles and progression

Item search: The player must collect fuses, documents, and bolt cutters in different areas to progress.
Restore power: The player must insert fuses in a technical area to unlock doors and systems.

Key level items

Key card: Lets the player enter a locked room containing an important document and a code.
Bolt cutters: Used to cut chains and open doors.
Fuses: Required to restore power and activate certain doors or mechanisms.

Entity behavior (creatures haunting the level)

Entities play a central role in managing the player’s mental stress:

Entity type: Indistinct figures that appear at a distance but disperse as soon as they are observed.
Effect on mental health: Entities make the environment increasingly oppressive. If the player stays too long in haunted areas or looks at them up close, mental health decreases, affecting brightness, sounds, and making controls harder.
Interaction with the player: Entities follow the player but do not attack directly. Their presence is expressed through noises (scratching or whispers), lighting changes, or visual distortions.

Narrative elements

Visual effects: When mental health is low, visuals become blurry, glitches appear, and the player sees distortions in the environment.

3D Environment

(Screenshots captured without post-processing for better clarity)

Game start, damaged elevator

Liminal room, exaggerated colors → surrealism + expressionism

Power generator room (activator of the liminal space)

Morgue Morgue with all doors openable and a body holding the badge to open the machine room

Liminal room where we see the body of a Backrooms survivor (consistent with the liminal lore world → next stage of the coma the player is about to enter)

BLENDER

Interactive TV integration

The TV_Retro model was modified to display a realistic video on the screen. In Blender, we extracted the curved part of the screen into an independent mesh (screen) with custom UVs. This mesh was imported into Unity and positioned precisely in front of the TV. A Render Texture driven by a VideoPlayer was applied to the screen material, enabling real-time looping playback. To reinforce immersion, a 3D Audio Source linked to the VideoPlayer was added so the audio is only audible near the TV, not throughout the whole scene.

TV Retro

TV Retro Wireframe

TV Retro Unity

Game Design

Main assets

Flashlight

Badge Badge to insert into the badge reader

Fuse Fuse to find on the map and place in the fuse box

Fuse box

Some doors are locked: some require a badge to unlock, others require a key.

Badge reader

Badge reader

Badge reader zoom

Particle effects

Many visual particles were integrated into the game to reinforce immersion and overall realism. They are especially used in situations involving electrical or mechanical elements. For example, spark and smoke effects are triggered around the broken elevator, simulating an electrical failure, while flashes and light flickers appear when reactivating the fuse box. These visual details, while subtle, strongly contribute to the game’s oppressive atmosphere.

Particles (electrical and fog) around and inside the broken elevator

Particles Many particle settings available

Electrical particles on the fuse box during reactivation with the 3 fuses

User Interface

Main menu

Main menu When the game starts, this UI appears.

A “Settings” page is accessible here. It allows changing the game’s master volume and mouse sensitivity.

Pause menu

Pause menu UI, in the same style as the rest of the game. It provides access to the inventory, lets you resume, and also return to the main menu.

Inventory

The inventory lets you view collected items and click each one to see more information.

Detailed item descriptions in the inventory

Each item has a detailed description explaining its utility or providing story context.

The UI was carefully designed to match the game’s art direction, notably through the use of a horror-styled font that reinforces the unsettling mood. Interactivity was also heavily polished: text elements react dynamically on mouse hover by shifting to a blood-red tint, creating subtle visual tension. Navigation between the different menu windows was refined to offer a smooth experience, with transitions that preserve immersion while maintaining overall visual coherence.

Post-processing

In Liminight, the VHS effect plays a central role in the art direction and post-effects treatment. This visual choice supports the goal of reinforcing the psychological atmosphere, sensory destabilization, and the feeling of derealization throughout the game.

Artistic goals

Create a disturbing lo-fi aesthetic: The VHS effect produces an imperfect, grainy, degraded image. It evokes damaged analog recordings, consistent with exploring an abandoned and narratively unstable asylum.
Increase distance from reality: This distortion layer suggests the player is not witnessing real events directly, but a biased perception, possibly altered by trauma or blurred memory.
Establish a recognizable visual signature: The VHS render helps define the game’s aesthetic identity. It draws from the visual codes of certain contemporary narrative horror games (e.g., Fear to Fathom) and unsettling analog films.

Post Process Video

Technical implementation

The effect is implemented through the native post-processing system of the Universal Render Pipeline (URP), combined with a Global Volume and potentially custom shaders.

A Global Volume is used with the following overrides:
- Bloom (exaggerated glow, retro halos)
- Film Grain (analog video grain)
- Vignette (darkened edges)
- Chromatic Aberration (RGB drift)
- Color Adjustments (desaturation, warm temperature)

Global Volume

Available settings in the Global Volume

Impact on the player experience

This image treatment acts as a sensory interface between the player and the game world. It helps to:

visually disorient without relying on artificial jump scares,
evoke a feeling of surveillance or recording,
suggest the main character’s reality is altered, unstable, or fragmented.

In that sense, the VHS filter is not just an aesthetic effect, but an implicit narrative vector consistent with themes of trauma, looping, and loss of bearings.

Ambient NPCs and scripted entities

To amplify the anxious atmosphere and reinforce the feeling of mental instability, animated non-player characters (NPCs) were integrated into certain key sequences. These entities are not interactive in the traditional sense, but play a central role in building psychological tension.

Goals

Reinforce fleeting appearances: Some NPCs are placed behind doors or at the end of a corridor. Their brief appearance, often accompanied by an audio or lighting change, triggers a startle response or a feeling of intrusion.
Create indirect fear: These entities automatically disappear as the player approaches, avoiding any direct contact. This leaves a constant doubt: was I really being followed?
Use animation for impact: Each entity has a simple but striking animation (trembling, frozen stance, jerky movement) to heighten the strangeness of its presence.
Precise event scripting: NPC appearances are triggered by specific player actions (e.g., crossing an invisible trigger). This guarantees surprise while keeping full control over narrative pacing.

Integration example

Corridor appearance after opening a door: The player opens a metal door. On the other side, a frozen NPC stands in the middle of the corridor. As soon as the player takes a few steps forward, the entity dissolves into a visual and audio glitch. The corridor becomes empty again, amplifying the sense of unreality.

Screamer Video

General Technical Overview

Beyond specific scripts, this section describes the global technical approaches and the mechanisms underlying the game’s behavior.

Architecture and system interactions

The game relies on a component-based architecture, where each GameObject is assigned specific scripts defining its behavior. Key systems interact through events or direct references:

Centralized Player Controller: The PlayerController acts as the core of player actions, managing movement, camera, and states such as sprinting or crouching. It communicates state (e.g., stamina via onStaminaChanged) to other systems like the UI.
Modular Inventory System: Inventory.cs manages the inventory’s data logic.
Contextual interactions:
- Interactions with the environment (doors, card readers) are often triggered by a raycast from the player’s camera (Physics.Raycast).
- Scripts like InteractBehavior (mentioned in DoorOpener and CardReader) appear to play a central role in managing these interactions.
Event-driven game logic and controlled coupling:
- Events (such as onItemAdded in Inventory) allow different systems to react to state changes without being tightly coupled.

State management and player feedback

Particular attention is paid to state tracking for the player and interactive objects, and to communicating these states to the player:

Explicit states: Booleans such as isOpen, isLocked, isAnimating (DoorOpener), isActivated (CardReader), isCrouching, isSprinting, isExhausted (PlayerController) track current states for entities and the player.
Multisensory feedback:
- Audio: Heavy use of AudioSource for ambience, interaction sounds (door open/close, card reader success/failure), and player feedback (footsteps, breathing).
- Visual: Light state changes on the CardReader (red/green), temporary on-screen messages, particle effects.
- UI: UI elements such as the stamina bar (StaminaUI) provide continuous information.

Save system

Auto-save at the end of each floor
Option to restart a floor from the main menu

Main scripts

See the Code tab for the full ElevatorFall.cs script.

1. CardReader.cs

Main functionality: Handle interaction with a card reader to unlock or open a door.

2. DoorOpener.cs

Main functionality: Control the animated opening and closing of a door, as well as its locked state.

3. HeadBob.cs

Main functionality: Simulate the player’s head movement (bobbing) while moving and play footstep sounds.

4. Inventory.cs

Main functionality: Manage a list of items the player can collect.

5. PlayerController.cs

Main functionality: Handle all aspects of player character movement, camera, stamina, and crouching state.

Task tracking

Task	Priority	Status
Create the scene DevTest_Scene	High	Done
GitHub	High	Done
Map design	High	In progress
Integrate the player into scene 1	Low	Done
Detailed level design for Floor -10	High	In progress
Writing audio/text documents findable in the level	Medium	In progress
Define the precise conditions for the different level endings	Medium	Not started
Create entities / scripted events	Low	In progress
Integrate the ambiguous ending cutscene with Subject XX awakening	Low	In progress
Implement the narrative loop mechanics and MIRAGE system sabotage	Low	Not started
Create interactive assets (door, badge, keypad, bolt cutters, fuses...)	Medium	Done
Implement the player control system (movement, sprint, fatigue, head bob, colliders)	High	Done
Interaction system (crosshair, “F” to interact, outline, click-to-collect)	Low	Done
Create menus (Main menu, Pause, Settings)	Medium	Done
Add realistic flashlight (sway, flicker, sound, improvements)	Low	Done
Organize and set up the test scene (TestScene)	High	Done
Create the main menu background scene	Medium	In progress
Fix menu interactions	Medium	In progress
Create the starting environment with ambience, assets, etc.	High	Done
Data persistence (saves)	High	Not started
Credit page and quit button	Medium	In progress
Add a main menu button to the pause menu and a quit button on the main menu	High	Done
All sound effects: door opens, ambience sounds, humming, electrical, violin (nozman)	High	In progress
Locked electrical room	High	Done
Fuse box	High	Done
Turn on all lamps	Medium	In progress
Optimizations	High	In progress
Liminal rooms	High	In progress
Menu bug stays red when returning from settings...	Medium	Done
Baking	High	Done
Merge branches	High	Done

Credits

3D Models

"Electronic Fuse" by Zillious - View Model
"Keypad Codelock" by AMMediaGames - View Model
"Access Lock System" by Meowdeler - View Model
"Umbrella Level 1 ID Card" by Yogensia - View Model
"Bolt Cutter Low-poly" by MaX3Dd - View Model
"Game Ready Arm Model" by erkamenescol - View Model

Sound Effects

Sound Effect by Ribhav Agrawal - Source
Sound Effect by Ahmed Abdulaal - Source

Environment Assets

"Old Door" by Game Ready Art - View Model
"Broken Door" by Slepa - View Model
"Cables" by crisanim3d - View Model
"Nurse of Horror" by Sebastian Kansik - View Model
Abandoned Asylum - Unity Asset Store
"Escape The Backrooms Hazmat" by taggedk - View Model
Keypad - Unity Asset Store

Character Models

"Dead Body" by Lukas Bobor - View Model
"Dead Body" by liltoba - View Model
"Corpo" by Naira - View Model
"Dead Hazmat Female" by OHR3D - View Model

Level Design

"Backrooms Run Level" by flexing_kibu - View Model
"Indoor Playground" by Rose - View Model
"Slide PlayGround" by vaedskalw - View Model
"The Extra Slide Rig" by NO DONT EAT ME CASEOH - View Model

All 3D models are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

PROJECTS

Dash-School

GameFolio - Portfolio City

Liminight

Medical-ML

Py-Quant

Vision-AI

ASSISTANT