CLIMB

Level Specifications

Engine:

Number of Players:

Genre:

Development Time:

Unity

One

Puzzle Adventure

Four Months

This game was a short puzzle adventure, focused on exploration and NPC interaction. Narrative was critical to the game, and was slated to craft a story, meant to be an allegory to adventuring through life.

The original premise of the game had the player encountering three different NPC's with unique abilities. In the final game only two NPC's were constructed, these being the "reveal" NPC and the "gravity" NPC.

Design Iterations

Heavy focus was placed on player and NPC interaction. In the original iterations of game play, the level design was constructed to facilitate sequence puzzles. The design always had to focus on forward momentum, as one of the pillars of the game was tone in terms of narrative.

Due to narrative changes and time constraints, the game switched from sequence puzzles, to simple gather and switch environment puzzles. The original grey boxes can be seen below.

(Puzzle Layout Diagrams)

(Top Down Views of the Greybox in Progress)

Crafting Flow and Exploration

Emphasis was placed on leading geometry. The idea was to have seamless game play and exploration, but we didn't want to risk the player getting lost in the different elevations. It is difficult to see from the top down grey box images above, but the level transitioned up and down on large scales, emulating the idea of climbing. As such, the level was created with curved lines and clear sight lines. The goal of the level is visible from the beginning, with a high castle structure placed prominently in the players view.

All NPC characters were clearly highlighted by geometry, and visible as soon as players entered into the NPC's area.

Level Design Process

Readability and Art

The final level layout, as shown below, was split into three main parts:

Introduction and tutorial
Test and challenge
Final challenge and triumph

Since the level additionally functioned as a narrative tool, it was important that the pacing of the game play moments were inline with the emotions we had plotted for our player experience.

(Top Down View of the Final Level Layout)

In order to keep the geometry readable with the level art, the space was designed after real mountain paths. It was critical that the player was always able to orient themselves to the goal, and that they environment offered new and interesting things to explore around every corner.

(Side View of the Final Level Layout)

Readability with Art

Finalized Map Game Play

Game Play