Antivirus Simulator
A casual management sim where you play as an Antivirus software employee, trying to keep your (irresponsible) user's PC safe!
Date
Nov 2024
Role(s)
Team Lead, Game Designer, Narrative Designer, Programmer
Contribution
Systems Design & Implementation
Gameplay Design
Created UE5 Beginner Tutorials for Team Members
Art Direction
Narrative
Audio Implementation
Links
Engine/Software
Unreal Engine 5
Key Skills / Features
Gameplay Design
Programming
Onboarding
Management Simulator
4th wall breaking game
Team Size
6
Game Design
Antivirus Simulator is a 3-week design project, created during my Game Design masters degree.
The task was to create a simple casual game, but as I love to think out-of-the-box, I pitched the idea of a game where you play as an antivirus software to my team, and they liked it!
I saw the game as a management sim, having to upkeep the computer against viruses, but also having to stay up-to-date against newer viruses, as they get smarter also. I even wanted to recreate the 'hands off' feeling you have when a your computer or mobile phone goes through a big system update - where the computer tells you not to turn off the system during.
Inspired by Pixar's Inside Out, Capcom's Mega Man Star Force, and the cartoon Ozzy & Drix, I envisioned the narrative as the player an anthropomorphised digital employee for an antivirus company, working in their office and trying their hardest to keep their user/client's system from falling to viruses. The player is NOT the User, and the user has an impact on gameplay as well. The entire gameplay is seen through the monitor of a Windows XP system.
UE5 Introductory Tutorials
Despite the class teaching introductory Unity for students new to programming (which I wasn't), we agreed to work in UE5 to accommodate my personal engine preference as the main programmer. Unlike most of my team, I wasn't new to creating a game with a game engine, but still I cared that my team members had the opportunity to learn how to do so, so I volunteered to create custom tutorials for my team members who wanted to learn unreal engine in addition.
Problem
The class lecturer is teaching introductory Unity, but my team agreed for our game to be made in Unreal to suit my preference.
The lecturer isn't teaching Unreal Engine, but my team still want to gain hands-on experience using a game engine.
What I did
I created custom tutorials / walkthroughs for my team that enabled them to directly contribute to the game by programming the functionality for the game's workstations. The work that they completed would be the ones used in the final build.
Result / Feedback
I received glowing feedback for the guides. I was told that they were easy to follow and also fun to complete. Some team members told me that they found the tutorials challenging but doable, and while it was recommended that each member completed one tutorial, two members found them fun enough to complete all of them anyway.
I was happy to be told how proud they were when their workstations worked in-game.
I designed the gameplay systems in engine, and then made introductory UE5 walkthroughs to implement the 4 workstations used in the game. Although I made prototypes, the recreations that my team built were used in the final build.
You can find the Microsoft Word .docx tutorials I created below:
Game Description
In Antivirus Simulator you play as a little antivirus trying to keep their assigned PC safe.
Complete your chores on time to keep PC health up – or risk getting overrun by viruses!
Survive 3 system updates to win!
Stats to keep an eye on:
System Version: The current difficulty level.
Viruses: The number of 'visible' viruses.
Virus library Version: The current version of Viruses that the scanner can detect.
System Integrity: The current health of the PC. If this reaches 0%, game over!
The Antivirus HQ has four workstations:
Automatic virus scanner: Scans for viruses using the available virus database.
Virus Deleter: Used to delete viruses discovered by the automatic scanner.
Virus library: Used by the automatic scanner to recognise the latest viruses.
Communicator: Used to send notifications to the user of the PC.
The Antivirus has four chores:
Automatic virus scanner upkeep: Fix up the scanner when it breaks.
Every now and then the scanning machine breaks. New viruses cannot be detected while it is broken, but viruses will still enter the system. You cannot delete a virus that has not been detected by the scanner.
Manual virus deletion: Delete viruses discovered by the automatic scanner.
Press Spacebar repeatedly in quick succession to remove the viruses on the system one by one. A virus counter shows how many viruses are detected on the computer. The more viruses there are, the faster the system's integrity will fall. The system recovers integrity slowly when there are no viruses in the system.
Virus library update: Update the virus library when notified by the system.
Viruses that are a higher version that the current virus library wont be detected by the scanner, but will still damage the system, so keep the library up to date!
System update notification: Notify the user of the PC of an available system update.
Once this has been sent, the user will choose to update the system at a random time (humans work in their own schedule after all). Once the user initiates a system update, all workstations will disabled until the update is complete (so make sure to clear any existing viruses, and have a decent system integrity % before sending an Update notice to the user!). After the update, the difficulty increases. Survive 3 system updates to win!
