level design
from conceptualization to finished product
here, I mapped out the landmarks and points of interest. it was my version of greyboxing the level.
a lot of thought went into how much content the level should contain as well as how far apart from each other they needed to be. since this was also the introduction level, I had to make sure the level couldn’t be too difficult. a lot of the content ended up being at the edge of the level because it was easier to “hide” areas as well as make the player put in effort to find things.
in the future however, I plan to stray away from loading most of the content towards the edges because then the player would be more inclined to just circle the edges instead of actually going through the entire level. also, properly spreading content out would push me to be more creative in landscaping. this is a skill that I plan to work on for the next level. however, since this is the intro level, I think the current design of the level is fitting.
when actually building the level, I began with larger details such as shaping the landscape, building landmarks, and establishing the level’s boundaries. this was the most difficult phase for a few reasons. I had to make the level feel natural by adding noise to landscape elevation and making the hills smoothly connected to the ground. additionally, I had to design landmarks and shape terrain keeping in mind that specific areas could only be seen at certain heights. this feature was to utilize verticality as another layer to the gameplay, something I talk about in detail in my system design section. finally, I had to make sure that the player could not see any gaps in the level as to not break immersion. I spent countless hours building the landscape with Ue5’s landscape tool, and even more hours erasing an area and redoing it to make it look better.
finally, I finished with the finer details such as foliage and objectives. this was the easiest part as I was already thinking about what went where while building the larger details. primarily, I focused on making the world feel natural and immersive. this meant adjusting the density function within Ue5’s foliage tool, modifying wind speed and intensity for foliage, and sprinkling in special foliage that gave the world life and a sense of adventure.
verticality
one of the key aspects of the level is its verticality, where specific areas can only be seen by certain heights.
for example, in the top picture, players can only see the pile of stones (at the top left of the picture) if players walk up the hill with the fungi and pile of wood. the same applies for the bottom picture, where players need to find the hidden passage (the crack between the two boulders) in order to see the pile of stone among the flowers at the low-hanging cliff.
this is a feature that I will be testing and challenging myself to improve. for now, I would like to implement verticality everywhere on the map as opposed to mostly the edges, something I am doing right now.
aesthetic
asides from designing a level to be coherent and exciting in terms of gameplay, I wanted to make the level make the player just feel good. drawing inspiration from Firewatch, Among Trees, and Arise, I decided to go with an art style that was a nice halfway between cartoony and realistic. the simple geometry and and bright colors emphasizes the lighting of the level. as of now, lighting is still something I am working on, but it’s one that I am absolutely excited to improve as a skill. additionally, I plan to make the night sky more full of stars. I want the player to look up and feel like they are being whisked away into another world.
the three inspirations are linked below; click on the pictures to go to a youtube video showing their gameplay!
