Case the Property
Arrive at the vehicle, choose equipment, and identify a way inside.
The pitch
Greed is the difficulty setting.
Haunted Heists is a cooperative horror game about thieves, not investigators. Every stolen item raises the stakes, and the safest exit is always one valuable away from being a terrible idea.
Break In
Hack or lockpick entry points while noise and time begin working against the crew.
Steal Everything
Search rooms, manage limited inventory space, and deposit secured loot in the van.
Survive the House
Respond to escalating events, hunts, panic, and a ghost that learns where players have been.
Extract
Escape with the crew—or leave with fewer people and one extremely expensive vase.
My role
Solo developer from concept to playable MVP.
I own the game design, C++ architecture, Blueprint integration, multiplayer gameplay, AI behavior, UI implementation, technical design, production planning, and day-to-day direction. Marketplace and commissioned assets support the project while the core game logic remains custom-built.
1–6networked players
9ghost AI states
3inventory slots
1very angry house
Gameplay systems
The house reacts to what players do.
The horror is systemic: player behavior feeds pressure, pressure shapes events, and events change how the crew moves through the property.
Adaptive Director
A server-authoritative Director scores eligible players using panic, threat pressure, recent targeting, and house state. It paces scares and hunts while protecting against repetitive targeting and overlapping haunts.
- Weighted target selection
- Adaptive cooldowns and recovery windows
- Global and victim-specific event routing
Ghost State Machine
Ghosts roam, investigate noise, chase on confirmed sight, search last-known locations, interact with doors, and return to whole-house roaming when the trail goes cold.
Panic & House Activity
Player panic drives vulnerability while House Activity preserves the consequences of theft. The crew can recover; the house does not forget.
Loot & Inventory
Items have size, weight, hidden value, world interaction, replicated pickup/drop behavior, van storage, and a final extraction reveal.
Environmental Horror
Door slams, mirror apparitions, screams, light chases, breaker failures, and house audio are routed through shared scare rules instead of isolated jump-scare scripts.
Minimal Information
Loot value and panic stay hidden during the robbery. Players read the world, their teammates, and sound—not a dashboard full of certainty.
Technical architecture
Server authority without flattening the scares.
The server decides what is true; presentation is routed only to the players who should experience it.
Player ActionsNoise • theft • panic • position
Game State & DirectorAuthoritative scoring and lifecycle
Ghost AIWorld-visible threat
Scare RoutingGlobal or target-only
Player StatePanic and eligibility
Challenge
Make fear fair in multiplayer
Some scares must be shared while others only work if the intended victim sees them.
SolutionServer-selected targets with explicit global, area, and victim-local presentation paths.
Challenge
Keep tension from becoming exhaustion
Constant hunts turn horror into a predictable hide-and-seek loop.
SolutionPressure-aware cooldowns, recovery states, recent-target penalties, and one active haunt at a time.
Challenge
Let ghosts feel intelligent
Instant omniscience is frustrating; instant amnesia is goofy.
SolutionLOS-gated pursuit, last-known-position search, noise investigation, and whole-house roaming after a failed search.
Design pillars
What Haunted Heists protects.
Pressure comes from decisions and uncertainty, not busywork disguised as difficulty.
The funniest disasters begin when the crew agrees to take just one more item.
Players can learn the rules without knowing exactly when the house will use them.
Teammates can save the mission, endanger everyone, or become the reason a lamp was apparently worth dying for.
Current status
The MVP loop is complete. Now it has to look, sound, and feel undeniable.
Players can move from the main menu into a multiplayer mission, enter the property, steal and secure loot, survive escalating threats, extract, review mission results, and return to the menu.
Next production milestone
- Playable MVPComplete start-to-finish loop
- Vertical-slice polishArt, animation, audio, VFX, UX, balance
- Funding & publishingMegaGrants, partners, and pitch materials
- Early Access candidateContent, QA, optimization, and launch readiness
Credits & production note
Haunted Heists is independently developed by Moe Savari under EmberForge Studios. The current pre-alpha uses licensed marketplace assets and placeholders alongside original gameplay code and systems. Credits will be expanded as commissioned production art, animation, audio, and other final assets enter the project.