ORDER
A Game Jam Project
CLIENT
Game Jam
SERVICE
Producer, Designer, Artist
YEAR
2025
TIME
5 days
For my first game jam, I joined a five-day challenge with the theme “Death is an Opportunity.” Within this limited timeframe, I designed and developed a short UI-based horror clicking game where the player must spot and report anomalies throughout their work shift. If too many anomalies remain active, the game ends.
This project pushed me to think creatively about how to build tension and atmosphere using only interface elements. It also taught me the importance of quick iteration, decision-making under pressure, and finding balance between functionality and mood in a short development cycle.
This project was created together with a UX classmate as part of a five-day game jam, which we joined to challenge ourselves and push forward a concept we had been wanting to explore. We developed the game in Unreal Engine 5, where I focused on the UI design, visual style, and all of the art assets. Most of my work took place in Figma, Photoshop, and in Unreal Engine 5 working with widgets, while we brainstormed the overall concept and user experience together.
Because of the limited time, we had to set aside much of our usual UX research, testing, and iteration process, something that was both challenging and eye-opening. It made me realize how much of good user experience relies on time for exploration and refinement. Despite this, I focused on delivering a polished, bug-free game that felt cohesive and intuitive. The project also gave me the chance to deepen my Photoshop skills, which was a personal goal for my upcoming work.
ORDER is a short, interactive horror experience built entirely around UI-based gameplay. You play as a new employee at a suspicious company, tasked with monitoring several camera feeds and reporting any strange anomalies that appear during your shift.
Spot and report them correctly to survive until 05:00 , but be careful! too many false reports or missed anomalies will end your night early. Simple, eerie, and scoped down project for two people. ORDER was designed to deliver tension and atmosphere through interface alone.
Our main goal for this project was to challenge ourselves by joining a game jam for the first time and experience working under a very short development time frame. We wanted to see how far we could take a concept from idea to playable game in just five days, while still keeping a strong focus on user experience and visual quality. Another key goal was to use the game jam as a starting point for a larger project, something we could continue developing and refining after the event. After the jam, we planned to spend two more weeks polishing the game, improving the UX, and adding all the ideas and features we had to leave out due to the time limit.
As soon as the theme was revealed and the game jam officially began, we jumped right in with tons of excitement and ideas! Our first concept was very ambitious, we dreamed of creating a full narrative with lore, an antagonist who would appear mid-shift, and player choices that could change the ending. It would’ve added such a cool layer of mystery, but with only four days to work, we quickly realized we needed to scale back.
Instead, we focused on crafting a short and atmospheric intro that instantly set the mood and it became one of our favorite parts of the game. We took inspiration from Observation Duty and Five Nights at Freddy’s, studying how those games build tension through small changes and subtle scares. Our goal was to capture that same spooky feeling while keeping the gameplay simple, fun, and full of surprises. Some of our bigger “jump-scare” ideas had to wait for later, but we still made sure the core experience felt complete and exciting.
Here’s what we decided were our must-haves for this version:
A short, moody intro to set the tone
Several camera views to switch between
An alternate camera mode for more interaction
Around 16–17 unique anomalies for replay value
An “Anomaly Manager” to handle all the spooky events
A timer from 00:00 to 05:00 to build pressure
Clear visual and audio feedback for reports
A satisfying win and lose screen to wrap up each round
Even though we had to let go of some big ideas, the result felt focused, fun, and full of personality! and it gave us a solid base to build on when we continued developing the game later on.
Once we had our scope set, it was time to bring everything to life! Since the game is completely UI-based, a lot of our design process revolved around creating layouts that felt intuitive but also added to the eerie atmosphere. We started with quick wireframes in Figma to plan the interface, and from there I jumped straight into designing the visuals and experimenting with colors, textures, and lighting in Photoshop that would fit the horror theme.
Because of the short timeframe, we worked fast, trying things out, adjusting, and moving on. It was a great exercise in trusting our instincts and making decisions as we go. I handled most of the visual design and art, using Photoshop to give each screen its own personality while keeping everything cohesive. The mix of clean UI elements and unsettling visual details really helped us capture that “something’s not quite right” feeling we wanted players to have.
Since I’m not an artist, the Art visual part of this project was both extremely tricky and surprisingly fun! Our goal was to create spooky, eerie, analog horrorstyle creatures that would give players a good scare. When we started gathering references for our moodboard, the style actually felt quite manageable, at least in theory!
But once I sat down in Photoshop, things didn’t exactly go as planned. The creatures I made turned out way more cute than creepy, which was definitely not the intention. After a few laughs (and a few failed attempts)I had to approach the visuals in another way.
The new approach I took was to take my own pictures of random people and faces myself, then bring them into Photoshop to distort and reshape them as much as possible. I played around a lot with the Puppet Warp tool, bending and twisting features until they started to look uncanny but still kind of humanoid. This method worked so much better for me and, even tho I wasn't completely satisfied with the results it had to work since I didn't have a lot of time to spend on polishing them.
I also used the photos I took for the in-game camera views, editing them in Photoshop to make objects disappear, duplicate, or subtly change between versions. These differences also became the anomalies that players had to spot during gameplay. It was a really fun process that taught me how small visual changes can completely shift the atmosphere and keep players on edge.
We received such wonderful feedback for ORDER from other participants in the game jam! This was my first jam, and while still learning both game engines and design, the positive feedback from the players was so fun to see!. Out of 1,166 entries, ORDER placed around the middle overall, but we were thrilled to see it score especially high in the Enjoyment category, ranking #285 out of 1,166.
I’m genuinely so proud of what we managed to create in just a few days, it was such a rewarding and inspiring experience!
Attending a game jam was such a fun, challenging, and slightly stressful experience, in the best possible way! It really tested how much I could trust my intuition when designing for user experience, especially without the usual time for deep research or testing. Working under that kind of pressure was new to me, but it was also incredibly rewarding.
Of course, there were plenty of moments of doubt: “Is this the right approach? Should we focus more on player feedback? Can we really skip testing?” But learning to quiet those thoughts and just dive in, create, experiment, and keep moving, was an exciting lesson in itself!
I also discovered how much I enjoyed working with the art side of things! Getting to experiment visually and bring ideas to life through design and Photoshop was such a joy, and it’s something I’d love to deep dive into again in the future. And honestly, game jams were so much fun, I’ll absolutely be joining another one soon!
And maybe most importantly, team really is everything. Working with someone you’re fully in sync with, who you trust and can communicate effortlessly with, makes even the impossible feel doable. This little project wouldn’t have been the same without that teamwork.
And also a big shout out to the technical genius behind ORDER, Andreas Ragnarsson
as well.
Andreas Ragnarsson - UX & Game Designer
We are currently working and expanding on ORDER, do keep an
eye out for the full experience!