Tower - Level Design Jam entry
Jam themes: Blockout, Extreme
Genre: Third person perspective, action-adventure, linear
Engine: Unreal Engine 5
Assets used: Locomotion system by Jakub W
This level was made for Steve Lee’s Level Design jam, which is centered around making a level in one month. Jumping in, I knew I couldn't spend a lot of time on it, but I still wanted to participate, so I decided to make a condensed level blocked out in big shapes, taking advantage of the Blockout theme.
For this level, I imagined a beginning mission in a TPP action-adventure game. You play as an agent, retrieving sensitive data from abandoned, but monitored secret area.
My inspirations were:
Manga Blame! by Tsutomu Nihei, its megastructures and impossible architecture. This leaned nicely into the Extreme theme.
Uncharted level design and movement. I was using uncharted-inspired movement by Jakub W, sonIndecided to fully lean into it and draw inspiration from Uncharted’s traversal and use of landmarks.
After collecting references, I made a pacing graph for my imaginary quest and initial level paper design. I drew direct inspiration from manga panels and built my Blockout based on them.
When working on a linear game, I also like to create something similar to animation storyboard. It helps me envision important beats and framing of the level, and to brainstorm locations in more detail.
As the deadline grew closer, I realized I would not be able to finish the level as I planned it. I threw out the maze section and replaced with with a smaller and more straightforward stealth and exploration section.
Level walkthrough with design comments
Onboarding
Player starts in an enclosed environment, a room, just having picked up a sensitive data disk. The abandoned state of the room would immediately set the tone of the level. The small size of the room contrasts with open space and mega structures outside, amplifying the impact in both spaces.
Landmark reveal
As soon as player exits towards the light, they are greeted with the landmark of this area. The landmark is also the objective of the level, and my idea was to reinforce the physical landmark and game objective together.
Exploration time
As the player exits into the outside area, it is their first opportunity to get more familiar with the game and the world. With thehovering Tower above, and a bottomless pit below, I wanted this to be a calm gameplay moment when player can get used to controls, including some light traversal vault-overs. There is a chance to explore the area and visit other abandoned apartments. The player can also fail or drop down the jump, which will lead to the bottom floor.
Traversal introduction
After the exploration breather, I introduce the wall climbing traversal. I like to use the layout to invite the player to perform a certain action - in this case, I start the traversal section right in front of the player path, so it is intuitive for the player what to do next.
Introduction to stealth
For this tutorial, I lighten the mental load of the player by limiting possible actions - the player can only move back and forth on the ledge, so they can give the rest of attention to avoid the light.
It can be hard to judge the radius of the red light, so I put a small marker in the environment, which hints where the player should stop to be safe.
Landmark reinforcement
After a small breather, the next area shows the second view at the landmark - this is a reward for completing introduction and reminder of the objective.
Overview of the new area
This overview gives player information of what's to come and mentally prepare for it. Before the player can reach it, there is a small traversal detour.
Stealth section
A stealth section soon after the tutorial to reinforce the knowledge. It introduces the hostile cameras in new situation and let’s the player to deal with threat themselves.
Exploration breather
At this point, player can choose either to explore or to continue towards the goal. The empty exploration areas can be populated with rewards (narrative, pickables); and a vista reward - view at the Tower.
Final climb
The player has reached the bottom of the Tower. In order to reinforce the feeling of megastructures, I leaned in into the “extreme” feeling and introduced a long climbing section. However, to avoid making it feel boring and repetitive, I included variation in traversal - making the player to climb along the circumference of the Tower or traverse through small rooms.