Abtos Covert is a survival horror game where you play a soldier keeping guard at a remote outpost deep in the woods. Alone in a hostile environment, you must stay alert, manage limited resources, and survive whatever is watching from the darkness.
The project began as a three-person student game and evolved into a three-year development journey with a small team and a publisher. Over time, the scope grew from a confined map into a more open, explorable setting designed to build tension through pacing, sightlines, and atmosphere.
I played a key role across production, stepping into a lead responsibility to keep development moving and align the team. My focus was on game design and level design, shaping the player experience, guiding progression, and supporting the overall feel of the outpost and its surrounding forest.
Major Contributions
Level Design:
Designed the outpost layout and player flow for the commercial version (interior floors + exterior routes).Core Gameplay Loop:
Placed and balanced the core mechanics across the map so the loop stays readable and fair under pressure.Enemies:
Helped adapt enemies and encounters to the larger outpost scale, including new threats.Release & Playtesting:
Supported demo deadlines, gathered feedback from online playthroughs, and showcased the game at events.
Core Gameplay
This section is about the commercial full release version of Abtos Covert, the version we developed for almost 3 years and shipped.
The core idea started from something very simple:
Me and my friends wanted to make a survival game. Five Nights at Freddy’s came up early, and because we are Greek, we wanted to adapt that “survive the night” tension into a Greek setting.
The strongest theme was the military outpost. Military service is mandatory in Greece, and there are many stories, myths, and “weird experiences” people talk about. We built the fantasy around that: you are patrolling an outpost alone at night, and the myths become real.
From there, we expanded the concept using inspiration from games like Alien: Isolation and Outlast, and we did research into Greek folklore, history, and geography to ground the world and the threats.
On the gameplay side, the player’s job is to survive the night by managing limited tools, reading the outpost, and reacting to danger. The game mixes patrol, surveillance, and defensive decisions, with threats that pressure the player into moving and taking risks.
Level Design
•Responsible for the outpost layout and level flow, planning how the player moves through the space under pressure.•Placed and balanced the core mechanics across the map so they are reachable when needed, without making the layout feel too convenient or artificial.•Designed the interior floors and exterior routes to support readability, pacing, and tension, shaping sightlines and entry points to keep the player vulnerable but in control.
Ground Floor Map
The outpost is semi-fictional, it needs to feel believable as a real place, but also function as a tight gameplay hub. The biggest challenge was placing the CCTV (the player’s main station) so it wasn’t overpowered, while still keeping response times fair across all core interactions.
I designed the building as a 3-floor hub, with the CCTV positioned close to the exit for outdoor responses, but also within similar travel time to the important indoor systems.One small but important detail was keeping useful actions within the same “mental space”, the player can quickly check CCTV and then turn to confirm nearby systems (like the sensor panel) without wasting time or losing flow.The goal was to save seconds in a way that feels natural, not gamey.
Upper Floor Map
Upstairs needed clarity and structure. If the layout is messy, the player loses time and the fear becomes frustration.
But if everything is too close and convenient, it breaks immersion and makes the outpost feel like a “game arena.”
I split the upper floor into clear directions (N/S/E/W) and kept important points easy to remember. I placed key interactions so travel times are consistent and readable, and kept the vent close to the stairs to reduce pointless backtracking.The floor is efficient, but not “perfect”, the player still has to commit and move, which keeps tension.
Basement Map
The basement stayed almost the same as the original student prototype.
It already worked as a strong “risk space,” so I didn’t want to redesign it just for the sake of change.
The main challenge was the mechanism placement and how far the basement should be from safety. If it was too deep or too far, it would feel like a chore. But if everything was too close to the stairs, it would lose tension.
I moved the lever for the locking mechanism closer to the stairs so the player doesn’t waste time reaching it, but I placed it so the player still has to step deeper into the basement to interact and take a peek inside. That small commitment is important, it turns the basement into a deliberate choice, not a free action.
For the locker, I kept the same philosophy as the other safe spots: it’s placed deeper in the room. From inside the locker area you get a strong view angle back toward the stairs, which creates a really nice “impact” moment, you feel exposed, but you can also read the space and see what’s coming.
Exterior / Enemy Map
The exterior scale was the hardest part. If it’s too small, it feels fake and predictable. If it’s too large, the player can’t respond to threats in time and the loop collapses. On top of that, camera placement had to avoid “leaking” into other camera angles so the outpost feels larger than it actually is.
This was solved through a lot of balancing with the programmers, adjusting distances, path shape, and timings until the loop felt fair.
I used terrain and composition to separate spaces naturally: vegetation breaks sightlines, the outpost sits on a hill, and the river creates a clean split in the environment. Adding more entry points increased player vulnerability, so I controlled it through spacing and gating.
I also placed key locations to support fear and decision-making. The storage/power area sits on the side where major threats can enter, creating a strong risk zone, but it’s still close enough to the CCTV hub that the player can choose to face it instead of feeling punished. The barracks help sell the scale the first time you go outside, while the storage being further out creates a “fight your fear” moment.
The Student Version
Before Abtos Covert became a commercial project, it started as a 2-month student game during my Games Programming education. It’s a fun fact, but it matters because this is where the core idea and the first playable version came from.
We were a team of three. Together we wrote the first GDD, and we focused on one goal. Deliver a complete game within the deadline. This was also my first full game project where I owned a major area of responsibility.
I fully designed the level layout and flow, and worked with my teammates to make sure the space supported the gameplay loop and progression. Even though it was a small student scope, we shipped a complete playable experience.
Technically, the student version was built in Unity, and it was where I learned practical environment workflow for the first time, blocking out spaces with Realtime CSG, importing assets, and understanding scale through iteration (including the classic early mistakes like “asset flipping” and inconsistent proportions).
Design-wise, the game was much more contained than the commercial version. It was structured around three nights, and the player stayed mostly inside the outpost. Outside, there were only three spotlight gates, which created three clear defensive points to manage.
The student version already had the same DNA as the commercial game, the outpost fantasy, the tension loop, and systems like CCTV cameras. We even had a small tutorial moment with my colleague doing voice acting, which gave the experience some personality early on.The big difference was scope. The world was much smaller and more contained, and looking back I actually find that scale charming, it made the game feel focused and “handmade.” This early version became the base that later grew into the full commercial project.
Events & Showcases
Game Athlon Athens 2023
Game Athlon Athens 2023Game Athlon was the first time I watched completely random people play Abtos Covert in real life, without me explaining anything. It was a different kind of feedback compared to online comments, you instantly see where players hesitate, what they understand, and what parts create real tension.The best moment was seeing things finally “click” for players after many iterations. Younger players who were new to gaming were especially fun to watch, you know they got scared, laughed, and still wanted to keep going.That was a strong validation that the experience works even for fresh players.
IGDA Greece
We also showcased the game at local game dev events in Greece, presenting it at a booth and talking directly with players and other developers.This was valuable in a different way: less about pure reactions, more about conversation and understanding what people think the game is, what they expect, and what they remember after playing.It helped us improve communication around the game
(how we describe it, what we show first), and it gave us practical feedback from other devs about clarity, pacing, and presentation.
Publishing & Release Learnings
Working with a publisher team and pushing the game toward release taught me a completely different side of game development. We had to hit strict deadlines for demos and builds, and that forced us to get better at planning, prioritizing, and making decisions fast.
I also learned about the non-game parts that still affect the game. Legal and business steps, store requirements, and how shipping on Steam changes what “quality” means (stability, clarity, onboarding). We paid attention to how the Steam ecosystem works, how visibility and wishlists matter, and how social media can help or do nothing depending on timing and consistency.One of the most useful feedback loops was watching people play online. Seeing real players struggle, misunderstand, or enjoy something gave us more honest information than internal testing, and we used that to improve the experience.
Takeaways
Shipping Abtos Covert taught me how much level design is really about time and pressure, not just layout. Every meter matters when the player is reacting to events, so I spent a lot of time balancing travel distance between mechanics while still keeping the outpost believable.The biggest lesson was that “realistic” placement is not always “good gameplay”, but if you make everything too convenient, the world feels fake. The best results came from placing core interactions close enough to stay fair, but far enough to force commitment and keep tension.The exterior was also a strong learning point. Scale sounds exciting, but it can break the game fast if response times become impossible. I learned to use terrain, sightlines, and entry points to control pacing and vulnerability, while still selling the feeling that the outpost is larger than the playable space.Finally, the shift from student project to commercial release showed me that iteration is mostly about re-contextualizing what already works. Some spaces (like the basement) stayed because the idea was strong, the improvements came from better placement, clearer flow, and more polished pressure.
NIKOLAS JOUKOWSKI