Atmosphere, AI, Famous Horror Mechanics, and Final Touches

Updated in May 2025. This course now features Coursera Coach! A smarter way to learn with interactive, real-time conversations that help you test your knowledge, challenge assumptions, and deepen your understanding as you progress through the course. This course teaches you how to master atmospheric level design and integrate famous horror mechanics into your game, along with powerful AI systems. Beginning with atmosphere and level design, you'll learn how to create eerie environments using advanced lighting, post-processing, fog, and ambient sounds to set the mood. You'll also explore how to design immersive scenes with depth-of-field effects and dust particles, perfecting the visual atmosphere of your horror game. Next, the course focuses on recreating iconic mechanics from some of the most popular horror games, including the camera systems from Outlast, Resident Evil, and Five Nights at Freddy's. These mechanics are essential for adding tension and enhancing player immersion. You’ll learn to build functional camera systems that add new layers of gameplay to your horror project. The final section dives into AI behavior, where you’ll create patrolling enemies that can chase, investigate, and even pull players from hiding spots. You'll develop intelligent AI enemies capable of dynamic interactions such as following the player, opening doors, and triggering jumpscares. By the end of this course, you will have completed a polished horror game with atmospheric environments, sophisticated AI, and iconic horror game mechanics. This course is designed for intermediate to advanced Unreal Engine users who are interested in creating atmospheric horror games with AI-driven enemies. Prior experience with Unreal Engine and game development is recommended.