Unannounced Title
Overview
Between June and July of 2020, I had the opportunity to work a short-term, 2 month contract for Shiver Entertainment. The title I worked on is still unannounced at this time, so the following information will be restricted to a high-level breakdown.
Although the time I spent on working on the game was short, I managed to contribute a satisfying amount of work while maintaining a professional level of quality asked of me by the studio. Originally I was contracted to build two levels and critique two existing levels, however, my role and responsibilities evolved over the 8 weeks. Towards the end of the contact, I found an opportunity to leave a larger legacy than what I originally had hoped for.
Role: Level Designer
Project Details:
• Studio Size: 20+
• Contract Length: 2 months
• Game Engine: Unannounced
Highlighted Contributions:
• Designed, scripted, and implemented a new gameplay mechanic
• Designed and built several levels
• Created informative documentation focused around my work
• Pitched creative new ideas to my lead
Level Building
While working for Shiver, my primary responsibility was to build new levels for their game. Before I could build new levels, I first needed to familiarize myself with the flow and pacing of the game. After spending the necessary amount of time doing just that, I was ready to get to work.
Level 1:
The first level I worked on was one my lead had marked for redesign. The previous incarnation of the level was not performing as well as they had hoped, so it was my job to rework it into a more enjoyable experience. Since this was my first level, I worked closely with my lead and provided frequent status updates when significant progress was made. Playing through the level, I was quickly able to understand what worked and what didn’t. I kept the overall size of the level roughly the same, but I reworked just about every section within it. In addition to the environments, structures, and overall layout, I also reworked combat encounters and loot present within the level.
Level 2:
For my second level, I was asked to pitch several different ideas to my lead and they would choose the one they liked best and would get made. My pitched level had to adhere to the themes present within the game and meet a specific difficulty requirement, but I was given a significant amount of freedom to design and build it however I wanted. The idea that my lead had chosen was actually the idea that I thought might be a bit too radically different from the rest of the levels to get picked. The new level idea actually ended up positively influencing redesigns throughout the game and new levels made after it.
Brand New Gameplay Mechanic
The pitch for my second level idea included a new gameplay mechanic to be utilized within it. When the level idea was chosen, it also meant I was given the opportunity to create the new gameplay mechanic to go along with it.
Design:
When I designed the mechanic, I kept utility and accessibility in mind so that it could be implemented beyond just in my level. In order to achieve this, I configured it in the editor in such a way that the gameplay and visual elements could be tweaked on a case by case basis. The new mechanic could be added to any level and fit each and every theme present within the game. Once the gameplay mechanic was finalized, I wrote informative documentation on how the mechanic works and how other designers can implement it into their levels going forward.
Implementation:
Scripting the mechanic proved to be a challenging task in of itself, because my code had to fit within the chosen framework of the game. The game featured a codebase that utilized both visual and standard scripting. Although I decided to use visual scripting to create the gameplay mechanic, a fundamental understanding of C++ was required to parse through the preexisting code that I would need to be able to reference within my visual script.