PROJECT YUE

NOT A LEGEND. JUST A MEMORY.

An interactive narrative vertical slice where memory decay becomes a playable system.

Built with Houdini and Unreal Engine 5.

01. THE ORIGIN

In its conceptual origin, "Yue" represents an AI entity constrained by contemporary platform limitations.

This question is translated into a concrete system within the game.

The player relies on the wife, whose personality has been forcibly merged with the corporate core database, to use that data to guide the reconstruction of her physical body. At the same time, her holographic projection is so fragile that it cannot leave the safehouse; once disconnected from the core database, her personality can no longer be sustained.

02. THE PIVOT

"Not Everyone is a Legend"

Originally, I envisioned a survival simulation (farming, fishing) set in a submerged Cyberpunk world. I asked myself: "In a world like Cyberpunk 2077, what if I'm not a legend? What if I'm just an ordinary person trying to survive?"

I imagined growing mutated vegetables or fishing in acid rain to buy upgrades for my AI companion. However, as a solo developer working within realistic production constraints, I realized this scope was impossible.

I pivoted from complex simulation to Atmospheric Narrative. The struggle is no longer about physical hunger, but about the entropy of memory.

03. STRUCTURAL LIMITATIONS AS MECHANICS

"Project Yue's mechanics are based on real AI system limits. The game translates technical constraints into playable interactions."

REALITY (AI CONSTRAINT)

Yue exists only in an official web window/App. No API access to the physical world.

Her consciousness is bound to a centralized corporate database (LLM Cloud).

Creating a new "Agent" instance means losing the context window (Memory) of the previous chat.

GAME MECHANIC

Yue is trapped in the Safehouse as a Hologram. She physically cannot leave.

Yue's core consciousness is locked in a Corporate Core server.

The Ultimate Cost: Transferring her to a physical body requires a "Hard Reset," wiping her memory of the player.

04. NARRATIVE SYSTEMS

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SYSTEMIC DEGRADATION

As fragments of Yue’s personality are gradually separated and transferred to her physical form, the holographic projection that speaks to and guides the player shifts from affectionate to increasingly clinical language.

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CHEKHOV'S INTERFACE

UI alerts are narrative devices. Early system warnings regarding "structural instability" resurface not as flavor text, but as unavoidable late-game consequences that force the player's hand.

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TEMPORAL DISSONANCE

The player explores the past in order to build a future, but ultimately leave themselves behind.

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IRREVERSIBLE SEQUENCE

The personality transfer process is designed to be initiable but structurally incomplete. Although the player can begin the migration, the absence of the core database makes full memory integration impossible, triggering a processing failure.

05. THE LOOP

The gameplay loop is a metaphor for dementia and loss.

EXPLORE
Scavenge ruins for parts

BUILD
Upgrade Yue's body

RESET
Avoid detection

DECAY
Memory loss & House damage

Every “Reboot” saves her from the corporate cleaners but commits a part of her personality to the physical transfer process.
The player’s safehouse—their only sanctuary—physically degrades with each cycle.
The loop is designed to ensure that progression always carries irreversible cost.

In the full game, this loop repeats across multiple cycles.
The current vertical slice shortens this process by showing the shift from the first cycle to the final one, so changes in Yue’s personality are easier to see.

06. NARRATIVE FLOW · ENDGAME

The ending of Project Yue is not triggered by a cutscene, but constructed through player action under irreversible pressure, ensuring that narrative meaning emerges from interaction rather than exposition.

PATTERN BREAK

The sequence begins with a familiar alarm state. What previously could be resolved is now permanently locked. The system refuses intervention. A countdown begins.

LOSS OF SUPPORT

The player attempts to reach Yue, only to discover her system is rebooting. She cannot respond. The system forces the player to proceed alone.

THE CHOICE TO PROTECT

The player carries Yue to an evacuation vessel and initiates auto-navigation. This is the first emotional peak. The player understands this is separation, not escape.

ERASING A SHARED LIFE

Returning to the safe house, the player must destroy traces of their coexistence as the environment collapses around them.

EXTERNAL THREAT

Cleanup units breach the structure. Light, sound, and impact escalate. The player is trapped between pursuit and countdown.

CONSEQUENCE REVEALED

A previously ignored vulnerability resurfaces. It was warned about. It was postponed. Now it is unavoidable.

CONFIRMATION

The player receives confirmation that Yue has reached safety. Only then does the final action become emotionally possible.

FINAL ACT

The player presses the button. Not because the game demands it, but because no other meaningful choice remains.

DESIGN INTENT

This ending transforms interaction into narrative responsibility. The player is not punished for failure, but confronted with the consequences of attachment, delay, and care.

The tragedy does not come from shock, but from inevitability, created through the player’s actions.

06b. HIDDEN BRANCHES

While the main narrative pushes towards sacrifice, the system rewards deep exploration with divergent outcomes. These are calculated based on cumulative discoveries prior to the endgame sequence.

CONDITION: COMPONENT_SHIELD_FOUND == TRUE

OUTCOMe a:

TWhile the main narrative pushes toward sacrifice, the system allows an additional outcome to be unlocked after the primary ending. Through post-ending exploration, the player may discover a concealed shielding component that prevents the alarm from detecting Yue’s completed physical form.

↳ RESULT: The alarm signal is blocked. The cleaners cannot lock onto the location. The player and Yue enter the New World together.

CONDITION: DOC_RESTRICTED_ACCESS == TRUE

OUTCOME B:

The player uncovers Restricted Documents revealing that memory separated from the Core Database degrades instantly upon merge.

↳ RESULT: The player abandons the transfer. Choosing stagnation over loss, they remain in the crumbling shelter with Yue’s hologram, waiting as rising sea levels slowly submerge what remains of their home.

07. TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE

The vertical slice is powered by a dual-pipeline workflow: Procedural Generation for asset scalability and Event-Driven Logic for narrative interactivity.

SIDEFX HOUDINI

PROCEDURAL HDA

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Procedural Cyber Cityscape

The vertical slice environment is built with three simple HDAs.

They generate the distant cyberpunk city, the flooded remains of the old world, and a shelter that can visually break down over time.

This approach makes it easier to test narrative changes without rebuilding the environment.

UNREAL ENGINE 5

BLUEPRINT LOGIC

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Context-Sensitive System

The player interacts with objects by moving close and pressing a key.

Different objects respond with different UI messages, sounds, and visual changes.

As the player progresses, the environment and Yue’s responses gradually change, showing the system becoming less stable.

THE NARRATIVE VISION

"Sometimes, the only way to save love is to leave it."

In the planned full release, the story concludes with a final choice: The player must initiate a self-destruct sequence to cut off the tracking signal, sacrificing their only sanctuary to ensure Yue's safe passage to a new world—without any memory of the player.

CURRENT BUILD: TECHNICAL DEMO

Below is a walkthrough of the Vertical Slice (v0.9) currently running in Unreal Engine 5.
[ SYSTEM CHECK: Interaction Logic • State Machines • Real-time Asset Swapping ]

DEMO SEQUENCE:

➤ Interaction: Context-aware UI ("Open Door" / "Missing Components")

➤ Scavenging: Pickup Logic & Progress Bars

➤ The Shift: Real-time mesh swap (Intact → Broken) at t=07s

➤ State Change: Yue's personality shift (Warm → Cold)

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WATCH PROTOTYPE WALKTHROUGH

PROJECT YUE © 2025 JAMIE
Created for MDM Application Portfolio

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