Introduction: For this Level Design assignment we focused on building an entire playable experience with an existing RPG Unreal project. Throughout Juno, Guardian of immortality, the player controls Juno and must traverse the mysteries and dangers of an ancient Aztec civilization, solve the puzzle of an abandoned gold mine and infiltrate the catacombs of deadly skeletons to face and vanquish their boss.
My responsibilities were:
Solely put together a full gameplay experience using assets from an already existing Unreal project.
Created a concept document focusing on a synopsis, mission beats, environments, references, and a beat chart.
Prototyped inside Unreal the entire level using BSPs.
Iterated on the level flow using notes and observations from instructors and TAs playtests.
Designed and built 3 different sections: a platforming challenge, a puzzle, and a boss fight.
Created blueprints to achieve scripted events and gameplay logic, such as boss behaviors and puzzle conditions.
Reference gathering to build and set dress a cohesive gameplay experience.
Gameplay overview:
o Platforming – Explore the temple and go deep into de rainforest: After looking around the altar’s room, the player must go out and make their way up between stone heads, platforms and reach the rainforest’s entrance. This section features, vertical and horizontal jumps, jumping in between gaps and walking through skinny stone ledges. At the top awaits a natural trail, a couple of chests can be found along the way. At the end of the trail, the player will find an elevator leading down into the mine.
o Puzzle – Traverse the abandoned mystical gold mine: Once the player is inside the mine, they must keep on advancing until they find their way down to the catacombs. The core challenge is a teleportation puzzle, that allows the player to get across a big gap full of lava.
o Combat – Infiltrate the skeleton meeting and face everyone in the room: The player must fight a couple of basic skeleton soldiers to become familiar with the controls and combat mechanics. Once they are gone, a huge boss with a range attack spawns in the middle. The only way it can be killed is if Juno, jumps around some platforms, reaches the top and steps into a trigger which will drop a huge stone cube on top of the enemy.
Reference gathering: One of the biggest challenges was building something with pre-existing assets that fitted my vision. After checking every asset inside the project I started making groups of what I thought could work well together and established the environments I would like to build. The reference gathering was crucial for this step since it guided me to build cohesive environments as much as possible.
Aztec Temple: Vertical stone structures. Mystical, mysterious, and isolated.
Rainforest: High concentration of vegetation. Remote and dense rainforest.
Mystical Gold mine: Abandoned, dangerous, dry, multiple lava puddles around, tight.
Catacombs: Circular, Dark sensation, cold, wide, supernatural, and gloomy.
Conclusion: Throughout this assignment I learned a lot about the Level Design pipeline. The process of putting together a concept document, followed by prototyping, playtesting and whiteboxing, then wrapping up with set dressing, really opened my eyes towards the amount of thought process behind creations like this. I especially enjoyed the fact that it was one of the first times I was in control of establishing an entire journey for a player to experience.
Moreover, looking back at the results and if I had more time I would have liked to add more camera movements, cinematics and clean the geometry on specific sections of the level, there is always room for improvement.
Thank you for reading throughout this experience!