Dark Myth
Level Designer
Team Size: 2 Date: February 2021 – June 2021
Dark Myth is a prototype of a level similar to Dark Souls or Nioh game levels fully recreated in Unreal Engine from a One Page Dungeon called “Do it for the Beast”. It was fully developed with all the knowledge acquired on player guidance and level design to achieve a believable world while being challenging for the player and as a released game level. This project was developed by a teammate and me, thinking on the design of the rooms and the different zones in the level, by maintaining the lore of the one page dungeon.
The first link is the Level Design Document (LDD) where we descrived in much more detail this level. And the second link is the Build of the final iteration we made of the level.
Personal Contributions
Level Designer
- Game flow of the level
- Cadence of the Level
- Design of the dungeon zone
- Design of the big cave
- Player guidance techniques
- Lighting of all zones
- Place details on the map (Assets, Water, Decals…)
- Enemy placement
Iterations of the Level
1st Iteration
On this Iteration we set the boundaries of the map and the first initial Idea for the level with the use of blockout. This allowed us to create the first approximation of the map and know how scalable the map was. At this moment we were transforming the main idea of the one page dungeon into a level scale similar to any Nioh or Dark Souls level. We needed pur level to have big areas and amuse the player, while preparing the zones to show the story with narrative elements with the simple action of traversing it.
2nd Iteration
On this Iteration we spent some time re-doing the big cave because the previous iteration we made did not convinced us the huge area and emptyness we created, that’s why we made it a little bit smaller but this time with multiple routes and corridors, making at the end much more interesting to explore. We added all textures to the map so we could have a closer idea on the environment feeling of darkness and mistery. In this iteration we added all player guidance elements like lights, to mark some paths and interesting parts of the map to the player. These lights would be used as candles, torches or fluorescent mushrooms. Also, with the help of the map geometry we could focus the attention of the player on some landmarks to make him know his main objective.
2nd Iteration
On this Iteration we spent some time re-doing the big cave because the previous iteration we made did not convinced us the huge area and emptyness we created, that’s why we made it a little bit smaller but this time with multiple routes and corridors, making at the end much more interesting to explore. We added all textures to the map so we could have a closer idea on the environment feeling of darkness and mistery. In this iteration we added all player guidance elements like lights, to mark some paths and interesting parts of the map to the player. These lights would be used as candles, torches or fluorescent mushrooms. Also, with the help of the map geometry we could focus the attention of the player on some landmarks to make him know his main objective.
3rd Iteration
On this final Iteration we started adding the final Assets on the map to make the level much alive and interesting. We filled every room and inch of the map with a lot of different objects that could improve the environment story telling while being related to each type of zone, always keeping in mind the player guidance. Also, we added some details like a huge lake in the final zone of the level, a river traversing the furthest zone and some puddles in the cave. With all of these additions we obtained a really good loocking level, while at the same time having really balanced zones with different playable capabilities.
