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Journey to the Roots

Level Designer | 2D Side Scroller/Top Down

Summary

This project comes out from the Global Game Jam done in january 2023. The theme revealed was "Roots"

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We decided to create a journey for the ants to come back at her "Roots", so the anthill.

With a gimmick, the player can switch the camera and can play as he wants from 2D to Top Down.

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Try the build here: Link

Project Details

  • Project done in 5 days

  • Created using Unreal Engine 4

  • Focus on creating intersting path with both cameras

  • Lead a team of 15 people 

  • Softwares used:

    • Photoshop, Figma, Google Docs, UE4​

  • No unreal packs were used. All the assets seen in the video are made in that amount of time

Overview

Pre production

Planning

Before going deeper with the layouts I made an extremely short LDD to figre out what the concept, how the camera works and what environmental hazard we wanted in our game so the programmers could rapidly prototype all the core mechanics.

Encounter design

Before creating the levels I made an overview of what encounters the players can face in the game.

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This helped me and the other level designer a lot when we started doing the layouts.

Modules

I created the various modules with which the layout was created. 

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So the team and the other level designer could easily read the layouts.

Modules.png

Layout

I created the final layout making sure to differentiate every area for what they will look like with the enrichment. I did that to help the graphic designers understand why and where to put what they had to create.

Layout.png

Blockout to Map

I started to prototype the layout so we could playtest and change what was not good. 

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After some tests we were happy for the results achieved from the map, so the Graphic Designers could start implementing meshes and work on the map.

Thoughts

This was one of the most fun projects I’ve worked on. I am pleased with the result. I could heavily increase my Lead, Management and Design skills. But if I would have had more time to work on it there are some things that I would change.

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Camera -  initially the camera was intended to follow the character, but then we noticed that was not blended good with the environment and we decided to put fixed points for the camera

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Platforms -  if we could have more time, surely the path would have had more interesting path and challenges

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