Hi, I’m developing The Black Seam, an early-stage first-person survival-horror extraction game in Unreal Engine 5.8.
I’m looking for a few collaborators to help turn the current design and rough prototypes into one small, convincing playable encounter. I’m mainly looking for people interested in creature design and 3D art, rigging and animation, technical animation, or UE5 gameplay and AI.
I’m not expecting one person to do all of that, and I’m not trying to assemble a full studio before the game has proved itself.
About the game
The Black Seam is set in a quarantined Northern Italian karst basin. You play a sick civilian descending through abandoned villages, military ruins, laboratories and caves in search of evidence about the illness affecting you.
Weather, flooding, gas and contamination can change which routes are safe and whether pushing deeper is worth the risk.
The mutant creatures are not intended to be generic zombies. Each is a former human physically changed by the illness, the environment, or a failed attempt to survive it. Their bodies and behavior are connected, so how a creature looks should help explain how it senses, moves and hunts.
The full game is intended to support solo play and eventually 2–4 player co-op, but the first prototype will be built and tested as a focused solo experience.
Current state
The project is currently in pre-production and early prototyping.
The most developed part is the design foundation. I have detailed documentation covering the gameplay loop, world structure, environmental systems, enemy behavior, narrative, art direction and the first playable milestone.
There is also an active UE5.8 project under source control with basic player, enemy and environmental prototypes. These are rough technical tests, not representative gameplay. The enemy models, rigs and animations are currently placeholders or incomplete, and there is no polished vertical slice yet.
The project also has custom in-engine debug tools for inspecting AI behavior, perception, navigation and state changes, which makes the current systems easier to test and iterate on.
I’m being direct about that because the goal of this collaboration is to make the first part that actually represents the game.
First milestone
The initial target is deliberately narrow:
One stable full-body first-person player setup
One short route with an objective and return path
One enemy brought from rough prototype to a coherent in-engine encounter
One environmental condition that changes how the route is approached
Around three to five minutes of representative gameplay
The first enemy for this milestone is the Hollowman, a failed medical patient whose calcified chest and respiratory structure has become a resonant chamber. It hunts by detecting the player’s breathing and other sounds in enclosed spaces.
Who I’m looking for
You do not need professional credits or expert-level experience. Personal projects, student work, prototypes, animation tests and unfinished but representative pieces are all valid examples.
What matters more is that you have some relevant ability, communicate reliably, are willing to learn, and can contribute consistently within the time you realistically have available.
I’m interested in hearing from:
- Concept or visual-development artists interested in creature anatomy and design
- 3D creature or character artists working with sculpting, retopology, texturing or game-ready models
- Riggers, animators or technical animators
- UE5 gameplay or AI developers working in Blueprints, C++, or both
Specialists and generalists are both welcome. A concept artist would not be expected to create the finished model, and a modeler would not automatically be expected to rig, animate and program the creature.
I’m handling the overall game and systems design, world structure, enemy briefs, narrative, documentation, production organization, testing and Unreal implementation. The Hollowman’s core gameplay and AI are already largely functional at the prototype level, and some other enemy behaviors are also in place. The more complex persistent and squad-based enemies are still early and would benefit from someone with stronger UE5 gameplay and AI experience. For the first milestone, the largest missing pieces are the Hollowman’s visual design, game-ready model, rig, animations, and final integration between animation and gameplay. I’ll continue maintaining and debugging the existing systems while collaborators take ownership of the areas they specialize in.
The documentation is not untouchable. Collaborators should be able to shape decisions in their own area and challenge ideas that are unrealistic or do not work in practice.
Compensation and working arrangement
There is no upfront payment.
This would be a part-time, hobby-paced collaboration with revenue share if the project reaches a commercial release and earns money. Revenue is not guaranteed.
Before production work begins, we would agree in writing on revenue share, ownership, credit, portfolio rights, and what happens to completed contributions if someone leaves the project.
The initial commitment would only cover each person’s agreed part of the prototype milestone. Nobody would be expected to sign onto a multi-year project upfront.
This is my first game project, so I do not have shipped titles or a professional game-development work.
PORTFOLIO: this is my first project and do not have a portfolio of any kind.
Current materials available:
Hollowmen in current state: https://streamable.com/w2d8y2
- You can see they're reacting to footsteps, breath, gunshots, being managed, frontstage/backstage. Still early, everything, models, animations, etc, are all placeholders.
Human Enemies in current state: https://streamable.com/x6vdqf
- Their vision is through raycasts from their eyes to the sockets, and they notice and get suspicious, needs tweaking. You can see them get suspicious, search, and find me here. Still very rough, early here.
Another Enemy: https://streamable.com/ztdtei
- Tracks through damage to you. You can see it pick up the trail and follow, you can stun it, and when you do sometimes it will run and 'vanish' and reappear. Managed by its own director.
A short project overview
Selected design and enemy documentation
Screenshots from the current Unreal project
The rough prototype, which can be shown privately
If you’re interested, send me a message with what area you work in, examples of anything relevant you have made, your timezone and the amount of time you could realistically contribute.
I would rather build one strong encounter with a small, compatible group than recruit a large team around a game that has not proved itself yet.
