Every Breath

December 2025

ABOUT

Every Breath is a narrative-driven survival game about a child journeying with their ailing mother through a desolate landscape where every breath costs oxygen.

Players must balance limited oxygen resources with moments of emotional connection, choosing whether to conserve life or spend it on love. Each choice tests what it truly means to keep someone alive, both physically and in memory.

Made in Unreal Engine 5

My Role

Lead Designer

My Responsibilites:

  • Collaborating with the team to set player experience goal

  • Designing paper game to prototype narrative and core loop

  • Designing levels in-engine

  • Co-writing dialogue scenes with narrative team

  • Assisting producer with assigning tasks

  • Overseeing digital prototype playtests and working with usability to organize player-feedback

The Team

Hongqian – Engineering

Sam Lupson – Production, Narrative

Trina Guharoy – Narrative, Design, Usability

Violet – Art, Design

Matt Kassorla – Design, Usability, Narrative

Player Experience Goals

1. Players will feel protective as they navigate a toxic cave environment with their mother on their back.

2. Players will feel the strength of a child-parent bond, as they make in-game sacrifices for their kin.

DESIGN PROCESS 1

Our team began with a paper prototype to test our player experience goal. I led initial design meetings to create our core loop, and designed a simple narrative prototype with dialogue, player choices, resources and two endings.

The artist, narrative team, and I collaborated to print and test this prototype, and usability collected data.

Design Process 2

  • Created 4 Wireframes with designs for the oxygen system, dialogue scene behavior, map behavior, and time cost

  • Tested designs within and outside of team

  • Wireframes were instrumental in implementing proper behavior and reducing unnecessary in-engine iteration

Level Design and Implementation

  • Our digital prototype began with in-engine greyboxing, followed by playtesting and iteration

  • Once level sections were properly balanced, I implemented cave art assets provided by art and engineering

  • I also implemented lighting, and custom blueprint objects provided by engineering directly into the editor

  • Along with the narrative team, I implemented dialogue scenes, bug tested, and balanced oxygen costs for talking