A 3rd-person co-op, fantasy/action game for consoles. Unless stated otherwise, all content featured here was authored by me as senior world designer/artist on the project. This work represents concept through early production phases.
CONCEPT DESIGN
WITH
STORY MAPS
Each map, loosely based on known story elements at the time, represents approximately 3-4 hours of gameplay.
INFO
This is the story of a group of disparate travelers. Though their journey is fraught with death and mayhem, they always manage to survive. Eventually they will reach their goal, but it is the experience they will remember..
Story isn’t necessary, but it can help to give depth to design ideas. A series of simple jumps can be anything, but knowing whether they are the tops of enormous pillars or stepping stones in a pond will drastically affect the experience.
I love designing buildings, but architecture has to be integrated into the environment, not applied like a tattoo. The environment itself is a character. From props to enemies, to mood and style - everything should support the concept.
LEVEL DESIGN
The Town is a self-contained region with its own missions. It is subdivided into smaller arenas, each with its own set of challenges, and sub-missions that support the overall arc.
These maps are drawn to scale since they will go directly into blockout. Specific missions, enemies, and architectural features are called out.
The finished blockout is color-coded and separated into layers, and initial markup is added to allow for a player walk-through.
LEVEL BUILDING
Beneath the town lies a furnace, the engine that keeps it running, and beneath that the bottomless caverns of fire and smoke...Or something like that.
Inevitably, the design changes when moving from map to blockout. In this series, the level design is refocused and refined several times as the blockout region gets tighter.
Originally this was intended to be a fairly open and inter-connected level (3), but that proved to be an unviable approach.
Architecturally there is not as much variety as the Town. The overall layout is more compelling from an art standpoint, because the shell and props are consistent throughout the level, which would save on production time.
The complete Aqueduct region was a bit overwhelming, so a single arm was isolated and turned into its own level (4). The ‘industrial’ aspect has been toned down with an emphasis placed on the aqueducts themselves as the feature element throughout.
Other areas were also developed (6). These all use a modular set of components I developed based on our movement and combat standards.
The vertical shaft from the original concepts reappeared in a scaled down, but still dramatic configuration. I only had incidental involvement in building this space, but came in later to work on movement progression and combat iteration.
