Rituals of the Forgotten is a PC horror simulation where the ghost is not a scripted jump scare, it is a case to solve. You explore a haunted Malaysian house, gather evidence, work out whether you are dealing with a Pontianak, Toyol, Penanggal, or Pocong, and end it with the correct traditional ritual. We built it in Unreal Engine 5 as a team of four for our Workshop II course.
My lanes
I owned the game design end to end: the concept, the investigation loop, the level design, and all of the sound. I also ran the project, handling version control, integration, and documentation. The programming, including the ghost AI and sanity systems, was Danish Irsyad's work.
Designing the investigation
The design bet was that identification is scarier than a chase. Each spirit leaves different evidence, so the loop is: explore, collect clues, name the entity, then perform its specific ritual with traditional tools like paku and tali Pocong. Get the ritual wrong and the problem stays. A sanity system does the pacing, punishing time spent near the ghost, so tension climbs even when nothing is chasing you. That let us build a slow burn game where Malaysian folklore is the mechanic, not the wallpaper.
Sound as the horror engine
I built the soundscape in layers. Effects and music were sourced from Epidemic Sound, but the human sounds are mine: I recorded the vocals myself, including eight gasp samples that trigger at random when a ghost hurts you. Everything went through Audacity for cleanup, then into Unreal as Sound Cues. Footsteps run eight samples through a Random node so movement never loops audibly, and a heartbeat tracks the sanity system, getting harder to ignore as your mind goes.
Where it stands
Delivered as a playable PC prototype for Workshop II in semester 1, 2025/2026, with the trailer public on YouTube.