top of page
Level DesigN
Full Levels
FULL LEVELS
Starting Village
Project: Lingering Legacy
(See the prototyping section below for the blocked-out version of this level!)
This level acts as the first area of Lingering Legacy. It is the players home, a peaceful village tucked into a valley between mountains and a dense forest. Your fellow villagers walk amongst the flowers and trees, greeting you as you pass. A statue built to commemorate the Goddess of Knowledge stands resolute at the far end of the village and a chasm separates half the level into two sides connected by wooden bridges.
This level was extremely fun for me to build, especially taking it from concept to completion. While the original level was good, as I mention in the prototyping section below, it was too flat and overall not dynamic enough once the game evolved. I wanted to focus on adding verticality that both guided the player and was interesting to explore and look at. By starting the player at the top of the level, they must proceed down two levels of height before reaching the ground where their objective lies at the other end of the level. It naturally makes the player need to walk through nearly the whole level, giving them the opportunity to see the other places they can explore without making it feel forced or manufactured.
One such area is the watering cave (see the 6th photo). Originally, this didn't exist. While I was in the midst of replacing the ProBuilder block assets with the actual terrain, the idea of adding a small alcove set into the hillside popped into my head. I ran with it and an hour later, I had created this new section. I loved it and the team loved it, so it stayed. In fact, we hid a secret achievement in there! To round out its purpose, I added buckets and barrels to the stream's bank and soft god rays with floating particles to give it a peaceful, beautiful aura.
Ethereal Library
Project: Lingering Legacy
(See the prototyping section below for the blocked-out version of this level!)
The player awakes in a fog-filled, massive room after being killed by the Fallen Guardian. The Goddess of Knowledge revives them, telling them that this is her home and they must venture forward to regain the power of their ancestors. As the player progresses through the level, they come across books that hold the powers of Guardians past, having to complete scenarios using their new found abilities in order to master each one. Finally, they come upon the Goddess's throne room, where she resurrects the player and sends them back to the real world.
This serves as the tutorial level for Lingering Legacy. I wanted to create an immensely atmospheric area while retaining maximum playability in order to give the player a thorough tutorial and an interesting space to experience it. I had always envisioned a massive library for our tutorial level, seeing as it is where you meet the Goddess of Knowledge. Our Lead Artist Sacha Gaffney did an incredible job making my ideas come to the life from my exported ProBuilder level and I couldn't be happier with the result.
I designed the tutorial to be entirely modular, meaning that each room was a contained experience and could be swapped out and moved around as necessary. This allowed us to easily edit the layout if we needed to add or subtract any mechanics from the tutorial. Each room serves as a separate tutorial, where the player gains the ability at the entrance and must use it to get to the exit.
Destroyed Starting Village
Project: Lingering Legacy
After completing the tutorial level and gaining the power of their ancestors, the player then gets transported back to their village, though it isn't as they left it. The enemies that had flooded the area had wrecked havoc. Those you once knew are now dead, lying amongst the grass and flowers, their homes destroyed and burning. The player must exact their revenge to move forward.
This level's design was fairly straight forward. I needed to take the original level and give it an entirely new atmosphere. To do this, I reduced the level's light, added dark fog, and smoke rolling through the air. Along with this, I added fire to the houses, enemies strewn about in strategic encounters, and made small structural edits to further increase the environmental storytelling. The main example of this can be seen in images 5 and 6 where the hut that was built onto an overhanging slab of rock has now crumbled to the ground, lying beneath rubble with a fire diminishing it into ash.
Buried Ancient Temple
Project: Lingering Legacy
These screenshots are from the buried ancient temple level I made that acts as a form of a midway point in the game. The main goal with this level was to create something that had a distinctly different feeling compared to the rest of our game. Meant to make the player feel claustrophobic, ceilings are low, hallways are tight, and combat engagements allow little room to breathe. Leading lines direct the player subconsciously while branching pathways lead them astray, all the while their only light source being the crystals on the walls.
The end of the level serves as a mini boss arena (see the last photo), in which the giant red crystal dissipates to reveal the mini boss. Once killed, the player is able to move on.
The two biggest challenges I faced with this level where the size of the corridors and the lighting. Perspective is always difficult to truly judge when working on a small Unity editor on a laptop. More times than I care to admit I had to adjust the scale of some sections. When I placed the assets, it looked great. When I played it, however, I found the room was either massive compared to the player or far too small, making the camera go haywire. I quickly focused on fixing this and found good reference points to use and was able to bypass this issue as I continued.
The lighting, on the other hand, was a decision I made on a whim. As I was constructing the caverns, the lighting began to irk me more and more. It felt unnaturally uniform. Caves are dark, obviously, so there was no way a cave system buried underground would look so well lit. To fix this, I disabled the external lights and created the crystal lights you see in the pictures. Getting the perfect balance of aesthetic and purpose took time but once I had it, the effort was well worth it. When I showed my team the impact of my decision, they were completely on board.
Overrun Forest
Project: Lingering Legacy
(See the prototyping section below for the blocked-out version of this level!)
After the player emerges from the caverns of the ancient buried temple, they come upon an overrun forest, once home to a popular trading route. Further into the trees, across a now-broken bridge, sits a demon-infested trading depot. The Goddess of Knowledge challenges the player to prove their mettle and they must fight their way through the trees to reach their goal. At the start of the broken bridge, they find a lone survivor who tells them of the trading depot and the player must glide over and expunge the area of evil to move on.
Originally, this level was going to a new start to a pre-existing level. However, once I designed it, I realized it worked best as a standalone level and to take the original level it was to be tacked on to and completely rework it. At first, this level was like most others in our game: taking place during the day. After I had finished its construction and had lived with it for a month or two, I decided I wanted to see what the level would look like at night. At first, I liked it, but something about it always bothered me. It was just too bright still (see image 6). To combat this, I worked on the lighting to get it even darker without making it impossible to see (see image 7). The result was exactly what I wanted. The lanterns that I had already placed became even more pronounced and it transformed the level into a deeply atmospheric and engaging experience.
The level houses many small spots with hidden secrets for those that enjoy exploration. Along with this, the final fight was a joy to design. It takes place in an overrun trading depot (see image 8) that has two distinct levels to it. A high ledge spans one whole side of the depot, with ranged enemies lining its tip and melee enemies flanking them. On the ground, an assortment of other enemies rush the player. It is a thrilling fight that if not thought through well enough, can be a great challenge!
Mountaintop climb
Project: Lingering Legacy
This was the first level I developed for Lingering Legacy, and I learned a lot from it. What started as a simple mountaintop glade with a few enemies became the second to last level in our game. The player must fight through a glade in which melee and ranged enemies lie in ambush. Archers line the cliffs above the player as they enter the glade and continue up the staircases throughout to stem their progress.
The level ends in a fight next to an ancient shrine with one of our toughest enemies, the cassowary. After killing it, the final staircase is unlocked and the player can continue on to the final boss.
The Fallen Guardian's arena
Project: Lingering Legacy
This level acts as the final boss arena and was a wonderful challenge to design. I designed the final boss along with our Lead Artist Sacha Gafney and so I knew how to tailor the arena to his move set. He featured a variation of each enemy's attack the player had seen so far while introducing new, terrifying abilities that would test the player's resolve.
He has multiple jumping attacks as well as charge attacks so I needed ample room to maneuver, both for the player and the boss. Once I knew this, I picked the theme for the level based off our main menu, which depicts the bridge and waterfall that sit at the back of the arena. I thought that it would be a nice little detail to tie the first screen players see into their last view of the game. This also allowed me to lean into that architecture style and led to me spreading ruins about the area amidst trees to give off an ancient, epic feel for the climatic finish to our game.
Tutorial Level
Project: Sleeping Rogue
My level design work for Sleeping Rogue consisted of the tutorial level (seen above) and the construction of hidden areas that acted as challenges for the player (more on those in the 'Areas' section below).
This was the first time I had ever developed a tutorial, and in its first iteration it showed. Rooms could be entirely circumvented without using what they were trying to teach you, the layout had no flow to it, and it was overall uninteresting. Through seeking critique and constant iteration, the level transformed into what it is today.
Areas
AREAS
Forest village tower
Project: Lingering Legacy
What it was
What it became
One of our talented team members Alex Cowell constructed the level this area is housed in. His original idea was to have the tower simply in the village at the end of the level which worked fine for a time. Once we started to expand the game, however, it no longer felt right to have it where it was so I redesigned the area and built a new home for the village's tower. I focused on giving it a fantastical, peaceful feeling while keeping to the grounded geography of the rest of the level.
Hidden Areas
Project: Sleeping Rogue
Here are the two hidden areas I constructed for Sleeping Rogue. Each offer a greater challenge than the normal levels and are entirely optional for the player. These were a lot of fun for me to design as I didn't need to worry as much about balancing the platforming as I did with the normal levels.
sector 7
Project: Sleeping Rogue
Each part of the level that makes up Sleeping Rogue is codenamed Sector followed by its number in the sequence of the level. Here, Sector 7 acts as the last section of the game. It was once part of an entire level but after cutting back our scope significantly, I had to rip it from there and make it blend with our one big level.
It combines every mechanic the player has learned so far and forces them to become masters of each.
Prototyping
prototyping
reworking the current first level
Project: Lingering Legacy
A new starting section to a level
Project: Lingering Legacy
 The start of the level. |
|---|
 The player can walk across the bridges and explore the area. |
 The player's home village is built into a valley/chasm in the forest. The surrounding walls would all be covered in trees with hills covering the background. |
 There will be farms, villagers, and livestock milling about the village as the player explores. |
 A view of the center of the village, where a great willow tree has stood for countless years. |
 At the back of the chasm lies the entrance to a cave system in the mountains that leads to the buried ancient temple level. |
 A rough sketch I did to show my team my ideas for the level. |
|---|
 An overhead view of the first pass of the level prototype. I used ProBuilder assets to construct the walls in order to quickly see if the pacing of the level worked well. |
 The center of the level has a massive rock formation that can't be scaled by the player, acting as a divider to break up the level. |
 A cave runs underneath the rock formation, leading from one side to the other. |
 The exit of the cave which leads to a pond created by the stream that flows through the whole level. |
 The other side of the rock where the pond is. |
 Though trees will be covering all of the empty space between the paths, there will still be moments like this where the player can see other areas as hints of where to go. |
 The end of this level has the player glide over a raging river where a long bridge once stood so they can get to the village on the other side. |
The original version of this level was the first that Alex Cowell made for our game. It was a great level but as the game expanded it began to feel a little less interesting than the rest. I made a plan to rework the level and brought it to the team who all agreed on my vision. I moved forward and began using ProBuilder to construct the basis of the level.
The village will be surrounded by trees and have hills ascending around it. There will be great trees that extend and intertwine over the player's head as they go from the top to the bottom of the level.
Part of a complete rework of a level, I designed this section to be a new start to the level. Though very early in its life cycle, the flow and layout of the level has proven to be successful from playtests.
This would come directly after exiting the buried ancient temple level. The player would emerge from the cave system into a dense forest of tall, thick trees, their leaves blocking out the sky. Thick brush and vegetation keep them from straying from the paths through the trees and deadly ambushes lie in wait.
Tutorial Prototype
We never had a full tutorial level for Lingering Legacy. What we had was a splash screen with our controllers at the start of one of our levels and had to leave it at that for the time being.
The tutorial happened after the player was killed and revived with the powers granted by the Goddess of Knowledge. Because of this, I always knew that the true tutorial level needed to have something to do with meeting the Goddess of Knowledge as a spirit. So, I made the tutorial level take place in the Goddess of Knowledge's Ethereal Library.
With each room, the player gains a new power and must use it to progress forward, all leading up to a final room where they must use all their abilities in tandem to reach the end of the level.
New tutorial level
Project: Lingering Legacy
A short fly through of the tutorial level prototype, created using Unity's ProBuilder tools
misc. levels
Misc Levels
This was one of my earliest projects in Unity. I wanted to recreate something similar to the fan-made Shredder game mode from Halo Reach's Forge World.
Throughout the course of making it, though, I began adding set obstacles in the level and ended up inadvertently creating a first-person pachinko machine of sorts. In the end, it was a happy accident that led to a great learning experience for me.
Another one of my early projects in Unity, I set out to recreate the level 1-10 from the first Super Monkey Ball game as we were creating a rolling ball game in class at the time.
This was a ton of fun to create, as 1-10 is one of my favorite levels in the Super Monkey Ball franchise. Though I didn't have a proper camera setup (it was static and couldn't change directions), it still proved to be a fun experiement.
My first big project in Unity was with my good friend and current teammate Ashlye Kaczmarek creating Children of Danvers, a first person survival horror game. Needless to say, we bit off far more than we could chew.
One of my main accomplishments was creating the library, in which a major event was going to happen later on in the game. On almost every bookshelf, I hand placed individual and collections of books to give the room as real a feel as I could.
Looking back on it almost four years later, I would do many things differently, such as removing the massive empty space in the middle of the room. But it's always important to remember where you come from so I'm more than happy with how this turned out.
bottom of page