The Process of Level Design

Environmental Storytelling

The main motivators for the player is the story. Therefore, the level design of the city needed to tell a story that was congruent with the overarching narrative. Similar to Atlantis, the city of Idra is an ancient forgotten place that houses futuristic technology. To match this theme, I designed the city to be futuristic, but also overgrown and forgotten.

Many Iterations

This image was one of many versions of the gravity flipping, platform moving, main puzzle in Echoes of Idra. After receiving feedback from teachers, fellow students, and fresh eyes playtests, the final version felt challenging and rewarding.

Incorporating Feedback

This was the next version of the puzzle I made. The feedback that I incorporated was make the puzzle smaller, with less moving parts. This is important, as too many pieces in a puzzle can make it frustrating and confusing. However, even with this improvement, the puzzle still had too many moving platforms, and the goal had to be better communicated in the next and final version. - See below.

The Final Version

In this puzzle, the player must flip gravity to land on either side of the two purple and green moveable platforms. The aim is to move the platforms in an orientation that creates a temporary pathway to the green light/exit sign to complete the puzzle. Communication of the end goal was very difficult, so the use of: green lights, pointing lines, and the exit sign were implemented.

City Bridge Layout

The following layout was built as a rough outline before I started to whitebox the larger bridge structure. The water in this image represents the broken areas of the bridge. The stone sections represents the optimal path the player will have to take. This layout was very helpful for communicating with my team about what sort of environment we wanted to create.

The Final Version

After several iterations, the bridge area felt not only run down, but satisfying to explore and navigate. It was a challenge to make an inherently linear structure more feel more dynamic as the player moved throughout this section.

During my time at VFS, I had the opportunity to work on several level design projects

Ancient Abyss

This 2-D side scrolling platformer was what I worked on during team project. My role in this Unity project was level designer, and narrative designer.
Another game with gravity manipulation

The player will have to use their gravity glove to pull physics objects and themselves through the treacherous abyss.
I designed and implemented two levels for this game

I collaborated with the artist of the team so that two unique levels could be created. A great way to distinguish the levels easily was the contrast between the stone walls in the first level, and brick in the second.
Quest for Valor

Using assets provided by VFS, we were tasked with creating a short fantasy game with missions and enemies. I decided to design a forest environment with a dangerous cave and railway system below.
Work in progress

I began with creating a 2-D layout of the railway system within the cave. I then used that layout to start building the small environment. To help with player immersion, I created a minecart blueprint. This blueprint was attached to a spline, so the minecarts would travel along these railways. These carts had to be dodged as the player traversed along the railways, otherwise they would be knocked off into the water beneath.
Final environmental set dressing

I added: water falls, vines, moving minecarts, burning fires, and interactable doors to create a complete experience.
Ori 2-D layout

This was a layout for a hypothetical Ori map called: The Forgotten Gorlek Fortress. This piece was a great opportunity to practice my photoshop skills when it came to developing 2-D layouts.
Unreal Tournament 2-D layout

This layout was created as the precursor to a Unreal Tournament map created during my time at VFS. This served as another great opportunity to develop my photoshop skills, and to learn how to implement a 2-D layout into a 3-D space.