THE EDEN DOME
Solo Project ● Unreal Engine 5.7
Finished: TBD
Team Size: 1
Duration: 5 weeks
Engine: Unreal Engine 5.6
Tools used: FPS Game Starter Kit, Adobe Illustrator, Perforce
Models: Meshes modeled in-engine, Low Poly Nature: Essentials (Vertex Rage Studio)
Narrative Overview
Set in the BioShock universe, you navigate the abandoned Eden Dome greenhouse, hidden deep within an underwater research facility in Rapture. Your objective is to reach the central greenhouse chamber, locate the experimental Heartseed specimen, and regroup with your handler before the dome’s automated lockdown protocols seal off the sector permanently.
Full Walkthrough
Level Layout
Area 1 - Crew Access Airlock and Reception Hall
The level opens in the Crew Access Airlock, a compact and industrial utility zone typically reserved for maintenance staff. As the player progresses, the environment transitions into the Reception Hall, a public-facing entry chamber once used to greet investors, researchers, and VIP guests. The contrast is deliberate: polished marble flooring now displays cracked surface fractures from pressure shifts, while ornamental botanical displays lie overturned and overgrown with invasive vegetation. The space functions as the level’s initial environmental storytelling zone-no combat is present, allowing players to absorb narrative cues through signage and ambient dialogue.
Area 2 - Main Lobby
The player steps into the Main Lobby, a grand presentation space designed to showcase the facility’s ideals to investors, guests, and scientific partners. At its center stands a marble statue of Dr. Vera Lennox, the visionary botanist and founder of the Eden Initiative. Lighting forms dramatic silhouettes across the dome’s glass lattice ceiling, while a curated inscription projects below her bust:
“We do not mend the world from above—
We must return to the soil.
The root, the origin, together.”
To the left and right, thematic commercial spaces flank the lobby:
The Lennox Collection - a gift shop displaying branded memorabilia and “mini Echelon seed” samples.
Sunline Sweets & Sodas - a family-friendly refreshment lounge once meant to provide "sustainably sourced" treats using crops grown within the Eden Dome.
Progression is temporarily halted by a locked Bio-Security Gate leading further into the facility. The player discovers a posted maintenance notice indicating that the access keycode must be retrieved from the Crew Office in a later area, introducing the level’s core gameplay loop of environmental exploration, narrative discovery, and eventual return to unlock forward progression.
This area serves to:
Contrast corporate ambition against uncontrolled decay.
Introduce narrative centerpiece (Dr. Lennox and her philosophy).
Showcase secondary spaces (gift shop + restaurant) for environmental storytelling.
Initiate first combat with light cover-based navigation.
Establish forward progression blocked by locked entry, incentivizing exploration.
Area 3 - Museum Hall
The player enters the Environmental Innovation Exhibit, a museum-style showcase intended to celebrate the Eden Initiative’s breakthroughs in sustainable agriculture and botanical engineering. This public-facing space features curated walkways, interior arboretum displays, and informational kiosks designed to demonstrate humanity’s ability to “grow a new world from the roots upward.”
Large artificial skylights illuminate manicured demonstration trees and presentation platforms, but structural displacement has caused sections of the flooring and display foundations to collapse. Cracks in the glass-paneled dome cast fragmented light beams across the floor, and debris, once carefully positioned for presentation—now provides cover and traversal opportunities.
In this area, combat escalates to mid-intensity, utilizing open sightlines contrasted by broken exhibition walls and overturned display stands to encourage strategic repositioning. Hostile encounters trigger among the remnants of curated flora, reinforcing the gameplay theme of nature reclaiming control over human spaces. Optional exhibit alcoves contain additional lore objects and audio logs detailing Dr. Lennox’s transition from respected researcher to radical interventionist.
This area serves to:
Contrast the pursuit of environmental progress with its unintended consequences.
Provide a multi-path combat arena utilizing exhibition ruins and arboretum elements as cover and traversal geometry.
Deepen worldbuilding through museum displays that illustrate the facility’s vision prior to collapse.
Act as a narrative midpoint before transitioning into more industrial and unstable sectors of the dome.
Area 4 - The Eden Dome Core
Stepping beyond the museum chambers, the player enters the Eden Dome Core, a vast enclosed greenhouse built beneath a reinforced glass lattice canopy. This dome was engineered to demonstrate what the Eden Initiative believed to be the future of Earth’s biome restoration, capable of sustaining autonomous growth systems through simulated weather cycles and soil regeneration platforms.
Originally designed to impress guests and investors, the dome featured a slow-moving Botanical Transit Ride, a guided transport system that brought visitors through curated sectors of the greenhouse. The path winds along suspended walkways and scenic platforms overlooking engineered flora, with rail-guided vehicles once providing narrated tours of the dome’s development zones.
This area serves to:
Deliver a visual and spatial escalation, transitioning from corporate interior to full containment failure.
Introduce the largest combat and traversal zone, utilizing open vertical space and multi-path walkways.
Contrast the facility’s original educational purpose with its current instability, using the failed tourism ride as a traversal system.
Create a pacing shift, offering moments of awe and vertical discovery before leading toward the final containment breach and Heartseed acquisition.
Iteration #1
The first pass established the main layout: a large atrium, central Dr. Vera Lennox statue, balcony paths, and the glass dome overhead. It set the scale and focal point, but the space still felt sparse and lacked strong lighting, detail, and side-area identity.
Iteration
Iteration #2
The second pass focused on presentation and readability. I added stronger lighting, more environmental dressing, clearer side destinations, and Art Deco-inspired details. The lobby began to feel more like a believable museum hub instead of a large empty room.
Iteration #3
The third pass refined the space into a more polished and cinematic entrance. I improved the statue centerpiece, ceiling structure, signage, lighting balance, and overall composition to create a stronger first impression and clearer environmental storytelling.