Chlorofell (Encounter Design)
Type of Project: Academic Multidisciplinary Team | Role: Level Designer | Size: 12 members | Duration: 8 months | Year Created: Early 2023 | Software: Custom Engine, Unity, Tiled
Overview
Chlorofell was developed over the span of an entire academic year. The final product was finished in a custom C++ engine while prototyping was done in Unity. Our game is an isometric top-down shooter, with an emphasis on player mastery over combat systems and challenging encounters. The game features manual reloading and ammo with different effects in order to give players options in the combat encounters. I contributed as a Level and UI/UX designer. Our goal as a team was to create the best game possible while under heavy constraints of course and the tools we had available. I worked with artists, programmers, audio, and designers to make our game a reality. I created the tutorial for the game in conjunction with the programmers and the first level of the game and the encounters within it.
Planning
The process of planning the levels came over a long period of time, and when I first started creating these levels I was fairly new at level design having limited experience. Understanding that I needed to cater to our design lead’s desire to create a game around a player mastering the combat mechanics and creating difficult encounters I used Enter The Gungeon as a reference for the levels. Since the game is a bullet hell, and its main focus for players is to master the mechanics of shooting, evading, and mastering different weapons I quickly became a great point of reference. I used that game to help me make the shapes of rooms and understand how to make encounters difficult but not impossible. Additionally, we used Hotline Miami' as a reference for the levels to support the mastery and challenge aspects of our game as well as to help create tense moments in my levels through tight spaces. A lot of my workflow regarding the levels was done organically without explicit planning as at the beginning stages of pre-production we were waiting as a team to see what mechanics would be implemented. At the time I waited to start developing so I could be flexible for my team. In the prototyping stage, I created a tutorial to help introduce our players to our complex combat system.
Breaking Down Uncommon Systems
Our game systems were foreign to most players. The concept of having to eject ammo and reload is not commonly done in shooters that our testers had played. Throughout our time as a team, players took a while to learn that the game wouldn’t reload their guns when they ran out. On top of that, our systems designer created different pickups that would change the player’s ammo to have a special effect when they hit 4 enemies. I had to create the spaces and encounters for the tutorial to allow the player to learn our systems. I had several sections of the level to teach the player the core mechanics in our tutorial.
The Changes!
Below are the two videos with the versions of the tutorials, they were made about four months apart, and the amount of data I gathered over time made me realize what worked and what didn’t.
Pre-Production Tutorial
Tutorial Iteration
Over the course of preproduction and the production stages the tutorial changed wildly over time. I began prototyping the tutorial in Unity while waiting for our tech team to develop our game engine. The tutorial was not well received and wasn’t very effective. I tried to teach the player how to use our systems by doing but the visuals fell apart, and the lack of direction left players wondering what to do. After reviewing my tutorial the professors, and the team wanted me to create a tutorial that was direct. I initially thought a tutorial that would allow the player to figure it out on their own would be best as I myself prefer tutorials that don’t handhold. However, I realized that since our mechanics went against the typical heuristics of shooters I had to created a tutorial that explicitly told players what to do. That way they could fully engage in our game and have the agency our systems designers wanted them to have with our combat.
Final Tutorial
There were a lot of changes made between these two tutorials but the major changes were how the mechanics were taught to the user. As you can see in the pre-production tutorial there was no text of any kind. In the final tutorial, there was text at the beginning explaining how to move, and throughout to explain the various mechanics. The early iteration of the tutorial had several encounters to teach the players that were situations they would never run into again. For example, the player would run into an enemy that is rapidly moving back and forth then the player would use the green ammo to find out it slows down enemies. In the final version, I have it where the player is told what the ammo does explicitly and give them opportunities to practice with the mechanics in encounters that will be repeated. The main issue with my early prototype was that it wasn’t teaching the player how to use the mechanics for the gameplay loop the systems designer was creating. In isolation, those might be useful but because the final product was never going to have enemy turrets you can’t shoot or breakable walls. Those encounters became a hindrance for a player as it set them up for situations that would never happen again skewing their perception on how the mechanics would be used in our game.
Building for Practice and Play
Level 1’s purpose was to get the player engaged and give them ample time to practice our combat system that I helped introduce them too. The encounters ahead had to be manageable but still challenging. The first room of level 1 would have primarily melee enemies and some ranged. Initially, I wanted most of level 1 to only be melee enemies but my teammates at the time pointed out that the player would be fighting enemies throughout the tutorial. I adjusted the levels to have a small amount of ranged enemies in the first area as the player would likely have plenty of experience fighting melee and would be looking for something new to fight. In the later rooms the number of total enemies to kill increased and introduced more ranged enemies.
Spatial and Encounter Design
The shapes of the room, in tandem with enemy types present, were pivotal in making sure the difficulty wasn’t too much for the player. The rooms promote movement and utilize angles provided by the cover in the environment. The gameplay loop that the team wanted was a fast-paced and challenging top-down shooter. With that in mind, I designed the rooms with lanes for the player to create continuous movement within each room. Players would have an easier time dodging projectiles and enemies by being able to reposition with ease. Additionally, the walls gaps between the walls in the rooms created chokepoints for the player to exploit. These decisions set up situations where the area of effect explosion, slow, and double shield ammunition would be useful.
Room one introduces ranged enemies with melee. It was built with two rings with lanes intersecting them. The outer ring has long corridors for players to move along, strafing between the walls to get angles on enemies. The inner ring was built to allow players to duck into cover if too many ranged enemies started attacking them in the corridor. The inner circle also allows players to easily peek out and shoot enemies in the long corridors.
Room two only has ranged enemies and was built with multiple lanes creating a “U” shape. The reason was to create a larger level while minimizing open space to prevent ranged enemies from overwhelming the player with attacks from afar. The room has a variety of different wall layouts to give players the ability to group up enemies into chokepoints and find angles to peek out from.
Room three, the final encounter for level 1, has a mix of melee and ranged enemies and a large room with top, middle, and bottom lanes. This encounter has double the amount of enemies than the last. Because of this, I made more space between the walls so the player wouldn’t get cornered. The different lanes in the level allow the player to continuously move and shoot multitudes of enemies while able to traverse the other parts of the room with ease.
The goal of this level was to build off the tutorial to give players opportunities to grow their skill with the various mechanics and help them find what gameplay style works best for them.
Ending Notes
Learning Outcomes
Through this project, I learned how to work my designs to fit the needs of the team. I was introduced to constraints, such as limited level size, room for props within the level, and the enemies’ behavior. I also learned the importance of iteration to create a better tutorial. The complex mechanics proved troublesome to tutorialize to players, but it pushed me to solve that problem to give the players the experience we wanted them to have.
Another thing I gained from this experience was working to help the game support the gameplay loop we wanted our players to participate in. Working with a systems designer to make sure the levels served the gameplay helped me grow as a level designer. Understanding the team’s goals and navigating the nuances of working with non-design teammates was an eye-opening experience. It helped me see how designers interface with other disciplines and properly communicate with non-design peers.
Complications/Issues
One of the main issues of this project was the first 4 months were dedicated to pre-production of the game. The level design was not in process until month 5. The early tutorial was created at the time, but the preproduction phase of the project had me prototyping mechanics within Unity to prove our concept worked. Additionally, when the project reached month 5, I had multiple roles, such as producer, level, and UI/UX designer. The other roles pulled me away from level design at times making it where I couldn’t put all the time I wanted to into the levels. For that reason, I believe the tutorial and level 1 didn’t reach their full potential.
Though the prototype tutorial was very flawed, the final tutorial also has its issues as well. The amount of text the user had to read was way too much, and I delivered too much information over too short of a period. The tutorial helped players understand the mechanics at a surface level. For many players, it was not until the end of level 1 that they fully understood how the different special ammo worked.