Order of the Hollow Star is a surreal, emotionally reactive narrative game built in Unreal Engine. The player navigates a branching storyline shaped by trust, loyalty, and perception: not through binary choices, but through how they move, interact, and spend time with others. The game centers around a sentient clocktower and uses a dynamic emotional system to alter narrative paths, puzzle access, and NPC relationships.

I independently designed and developed the entire game from scratch, buidling all core systems, emotional AI logic, and branching narrative structure using Blueprint Scripting and C++. All environment and character assets were sourced from Fab.com.

In a world where emotion defines consequence, players must earn trust, navigate shifting alliances, and survive surreal trials. Order of the Hollow Star reimagines narrative gameplay through emotional AI, spatial memory, and reactive relationships.

Developed a custom emotional AI module using Blueprints and C++. It tracks player behaviour like trust, attention, proximity, gaze, and dialogue interaction to drive NPC reactions and narrative progression logic.

This system was purpose-built for design nuance and control, rather than relying on generic LLMs. It’s tuned to enforce emotional constraints and reflect evolving player-character dynamics.

Currently exploring integrations with talk-to-text and procedural dialogue tools to expand reactive speech systems.

Emotional System:
NPCs evaluate the player’s loyalty, trustworthiness, and intent through subtle gameplay cues: movement patterns, dialogue choices, time spent with them, and more.

Adaptive Relationships:
Player actions outside of conversations shape NPC reactions. NPCs remember avoidance, betrayal, and favoritism.

Spatial Narrative Hub:
The game is centered around the Clocktower Hub, a surreal mechanical environment where the player returns between trials.

Trial-Based Progression:
Each trial door opens only when specific emotional thresholds are met. Some truths remain locked unless the player earns NPC’s trust and loyalty.

Consequences and Failure:
Emotion isn’t just flavor in this game, it defines survival. One trial features a puzzle where looking away at the wrong moment leads to sudden death.

Emotional AI System:
Built a custom system to monitor player behavior including timing, movement, and dialogue tone; and dynamically update emotional stats like trust and loyalty, which drive NPC reactions and world logic.

Narrative Design:
Designed a branching narrative where each NPC tracks emotional nuance, unlocking or blocking storylines based on how the player engages. NPCs evolve over time, remembering avoidance, betrayal, and preference.

Technical Implementation:
Used Unreal Engine’s Blueprint system to structure emotion-driven state machines, dialogue trees, and relationship gates. Integrated C++ for backend optimization of continuous emotion tracking.

Spatial Narrative Design:
Developed the surreal Clocktower Hub, a central environment that shifts subtly depending on emotional alignment. Trial doors open only when emotional thresholds are met, encouraging players to build relationships over brute-force progress.

Consequence-Based Progression:
Designed “emotion-gated” puzzles, for example, one trial punishes the player for breaking eye contact with an NPC, ending the game abruptly. Emotion in this game defines survival, not just flavor.

Order of the Hollow Star is currently in active development, with the emotion system and branching structure undergoing playtesting. The project demonstrates my ability to merge technical systems with narrative depth using emotion not as a visual layer, but as a core gameplay mechanic that defines consequence, unlocks, and player identity. This project was an opportunity to experiment with subtle emotional input as a gameplay driver, using non-verbal cues and spatial behaviour as data for branching narrative.   

1. Emotional Visibility vs. Player Agency

Initial approach:
NPC emotional states (trust, loyalty, suspicion) updated frequently and transparently based on player actions.

Problem:
Early playtests showed that players felt watched rather than engaged. Seeing emotional feedback update too quickly made interactions feel gamified and encouraged optimization rather than immersion.

Iteration:
I reduced the frequency of visible emotional updates and moved more evaluation into delayed checks (e.g. after conversations or scene transitions).

Result:
Players began interpreting NPC reactions narratively instead of mechanically, reading tone, posture, and availability rather than chasing numbers.

2. Dialogue-First Emotion vs. Spatial Behavior

Initial approach:
Emotional state changes were driven primarily by dialogue choices.

Problem:
Players who avoided certain NPCs or lingered silently were not being meaningfully recognized by the system, despite those behaviors being narratively important.

Iteration:
I expanded the emotional AI to track non-verbal signals: proximity, time spent nearby, gaze direction, and avoidance.

Result:
NPCs began reacting to how the player moved through space, not just what they said. This reinforced the game’s core idea that emotion is expressed through behavior, not menus.

3. Binary Gating vs. Emotional Thresholds

Initial approach:
Narrative progression was initially gated through explicit conditions (finish dialogue to unlock trial).

Problem:
This structure felt too predictable and undercut the tension of emotional consequence.

Iteration:
I replaced hard gates with emotional thresholds, allowing trial doors, dialogue paths, and information access to unlock (or lock) dynamically based on accumulated trust and loyalty.

Result:
Players encountered different narrative paths without always understanding why; mirroring real interpersonal uncertainty and making outcomes feel earned rather than triggered.

4. Failure as Feedback

Initial approach:
Failure states were initially soft (dialogue denial, delayed progress).

Problem:
Players didn’t always understand that emotional missteps had real stakes.

Iteration:
I introduced high-consequence moments such as a trial where breaking eye contact results in immediate failure—to reinforce that emotion in this world is not cosmetic.

Result:
Players became more deliberate, attentive, and emotionally cautious, aligning player behavior with the game’s themes of trust and perception.

This project reinforced the importance of testing emotional systems in context, not in isolation. Many of the most meaningful changes came not from bugs, but from observing subtle player discomfort or unexpected behavior. Designing emotional AI required treating ambiguity, delay, and misinterpretation as features.