Jacob Harvey - Level Designer
BLOCK MOVE
Role - Level Designer
INTRODUCTION
For this game, I wanted to produce a 1st person puzzle game to gain knowledge and skills of how to approach such a game. I took the approach of designing a tutorial level that set out to teach the player the different mechanics of this puzzle game. To do this I did a lot of research on level progression in-game such as Portal and the Turing test. I researched and implement methods to introduce puzzles to the player gradually through a level in a way that properly introduces the different puzzle mechanics to the player.
GENERE
1st person puzzler
RESPONSIBILITIES
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Concepting ideas for the game
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Research with level
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Designing and documenting level designs
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Designing and documenting mechanics
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Created pencil, digital and 3d maps of level
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White boxing level in the engine
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Producing mechanics for the level
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Placing mechanics within the level
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Testing and balancing level/mechanics
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Bug fixing
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Adding telemetry to the level
TOOLS
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Unreal Engine 4
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Unreal Level Editor
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Unreal Blueprint
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Photoshop
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Microsoft Office Suite
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MagicaVoxel
LEVEL DESIGN PROCESS
RESEARCH
Before I could start designing the level, I needed to do a bit of research on how to design effectively for a puzzle game from introducing puzzles, to how to effectively increase the complexity of said puzzles. To do this I mainly observed and looked at breakdowns of 2 puzzle games (Portal and The Turing Effect).
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The main points that I found were as follows
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Split the game into 3 acts
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ACT 1(Easy to Medium puzzles)
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ACT 2(Medium to Hard puzzles)
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ACT 3(Hard puzzles)
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An increase in difficulty is done by increasing the number of steps required to solve the puzzle
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Make sure to show the player the essential function of the mechanic before adding additional steps then add that knowledge to a new application
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Make sure the solution to the puzzle is clearly communicated to the player when they possess the required knowledge
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Give the player clear feedback when the player is getting it right
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Be respectful of the player and build on what they know but do not patronize them
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Puzzles are fun for the player, not the designer
PRE PRODUCTION
Using this knowledge, I decided to do some pre-production decision-making. The first was the creation of how the levels would be set out for this game and its requirements I decided on a section type set up this allowed more freedom when designing each puzzle as they do not need to connect. On top of this, it allows the player to better understand each puzzle as a separate puzzle and a clear end/solution to each puzzle (get to the next intermediate zone). This should then make level progression less confusing for the player.
Using the knowledge gained from the research phase I also planned out how the level would progress in the following way
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Identify what each use of each mechanic would be
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From these identify how each of these uses would be bought to the attention of the player
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And finally using both of these create the sections and order them in a way that follows the 3-act structure
LEVEL PRODUCTION
After I had decided on what needed to be produced, I went to designing each section individually by creating a map translating that into 3D space and finally using that to block it out into the engine below I have shown my design production process for one of the sections of the game.
Video of this section in game
In the production of the level, I had to make some adjustments not only to the levels but also to the mechanics used within the level. In the example below I show how I have changed the positioning to not trap the player within the block by accident.
MECHANIC DESIGN
For this project, the main focus was level design so the mechanics that were produced were basic but were things that could be utilised in a variety of ways to produce interesting level interactions these can be seen below.
While producing these mechanics I changed and altered some items of the mechanics some of which were based on research but also some based on improving gameplay. The example below shows a fix for gameplay in which I changed the colour of the no collision box to make it better stand out within gameplay.