Elementalist
This project was created in a group of 15 developers consisting of programmers, 3D modelers, level designers, concept artists, a game designer, and a producer. The game was created in Unity and is a multiplayer combat focused platformer, where you choose which character you want to play, each with their own unique abilities.
https://cagd.itch.io/elementalist
I was the Level Designer and I was in charge of designing levels for the second world, which was the Lost Sands world. The game designer really wanted to have the levels have multiple paths and ways to try out the players individual abilities, and so my task was to create something that would guide the player to the next room, but also let them explore and try different ways to get there. I was also tasked to introduce, teach, and test the players with a new mechanic, the sinking sand, that would slow them down and make them sink down through the platform. Our levels were to be broken down into five rooms, the hub (where the players start), two platforming focused rooms, and two combat focused rooms. This breakdown would allow players to not be overwhelmed with having to attack and maneuver around platforms at the same time. The first level in Elementalist was somewhat linear, only have the rooms in a single row, so I wanted to add in some vertical structure and organized it so that the players would need to go through rooms that went up, down, left, and right, in order to progress.
Designing the hub room took a couple of days to get right, as it is the first room the player sees in this level, and I wanted to make sure that it set the mood right and immediately show the new mechanic that makes it unique to the other levels. Our game designer requested that the door to the next level be set in the "hub" room of our levels, and that they would need four key parts to move on, where each key part would be in each room, except the "hub" room. So, once the players spawn in, they would notice the door right away and that they only way down is through this new platform that looks like it is moving. Once the players experiment and go down, they will notice that they start sinking, right here is when the player will either try to get out of the sand or sink through to see what happens. Either way, the player will learn the new mechanic by their own decisions and actions, which is something our game designer greatly appreciated. The "hub" room leads to two paths, however, most players will be directed to the right, as the previous level somewhat conditioned them to go only left and right, and the players will need to break this conditioning once they go through the right side path and come back with only two key parts. Once the players experiment and go down through the second set of sand platforms, that is when they understand that there is more of the level.
The room to the right of the hub room was a platforming room, allowing players to try out different ways to jump, wall kick, and dash around to try to get to the next room, which lead upwards. While designing this level, I was in the mindset that every character had some sort of dash ability, meaning that vertical jumps were possible for each character. However, when getting close to finishing the annotated map, I talked to some programmers, who informed me that one character would not have the ability to dash, but instead the ability to dig underground and to make sure that the levels were designed to allow all characters to advance through the rooms. So I went back to the design and made some adjustments and, essentially, split the room in two, one part being the other players would could dash well, and the other being specifically for the character that could not dash. To compensate the character would could not dash, I made a route that only they could get through, by digging under a crack. This path would get to the key faster than the other characters and was less dangerous.
For the room below the hub room, I wanted it to be unique in that it was not just a generic jump from platform to platform and do not fall room. I thought that having a maze like room would work well with the sand platforms, as their textures would be moving, causing a bit of misdirection from sand moving one way, but the exit being the other way. When first designing this room, it started with having the player start on one side of the room depending on which sand they fell through in the hub room, left or right. One problem that I could not fix at the time was having a way to incentivize the players to try going the other route rather than just the route where the key was. However, during development, the programmers made a mechanic where the player would need to activate a switch that looked like a torch to open a door that led to the next room. After seeing this, I went back to redesigning the room to incorporate it so that the room was split in two, however, the exit was blocked but connected to the other side of the room, making it so that the players would need to go to both sides of the room to progress, one to hit the switch, and the other to get the key part.
Both of the combat rooms at the very bottom and very top of the level were the most difficult rooms to design, as they focused on the enemies of the game, but the mechanics of the enemies changed in the the design as development went on. It made it difficult to test the rooms in terms of challenge versus ease, as the enemies were still being developed or fixed due to a bug or two. When initially designing the levels, however, I knew that I wanted the player to have the "upper hand" in one room and the "lower hand" in the other, making them parallel between each other, but separated far enough to not feel like the same level just reversed. Different strategies are implemented when having the upper or lower hand, as the upper hand room gives the player the freedom to choose where they want to attack at any time, whereas the lower hand must wait for the right moment to strike in order to not get hit and lose. Both rooms are mostly symmetrical, having a small adjustment to the other to keep variety and not confuse the player as to where they are. As I said earlier, however, enemy development took a while, and I was not able to test out and refine these rooms as much as I had hoped to and many last second changes to avoid cheap feeling enemy placements, platforms that would get too much in the way of the player, and adding sand platforms to help the player defeat the enemies effectively.
These combat focused rooms had two types of enemies, enemies that would fly around and attack the player when in range, and a sentry enemy that would walk back and forth and block the player from attacking, unless they dashed around and attacked the back. The flying enemies would always be the first enemy to encounter in both upper and lower hand rooms, starting them off simple and then challenging when getting to the sentry enemy. In the upper hand room, the player can choose when to attack and pounce upon the enemy when they have a set path or idea of eliminating all the enemies, usually ending with the sentry enemy as the last one. The lower hand room, however, is the opposite, where the sentry enemies move back and forth above the player's paths, making them need to time it out and then attack the flying enemies before dealing with the sentry enemies. The player does get some help with the sand platform above the two sentry enemies, allowing them to jump, stay floating for a bit fore sinking back down and attacking them from behind.
Working on this project was very enjoyable and great experience in designing levels in a collaborative way with other developers. I have learned a lot, especially with designing when working in a group and development on certain aspects of the game take longer than expected. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to work on this unique project and thoroughly enjoyed working with the team.
