For this Top-Down project, I’ve designed two levels—the tutorial level, and a larger, exploration-focused level set in a sunless wilderness, which connects several distinct environments: a cemetery, ruined temple, village, fields, forests, and swamps. While not as expansive as an open-world level, it is significantly larger than the tutorial level, providing a more immersive environment where the player must navigate between areas using fire as their primary light source.
Design process
The primary challenge in this level design has been creating areas where the player can spawn at random locations while ensuring that the journey to the next objective—finding and lighting the next fire—always feels engaging and unpredictable. To achieve this, I’ve designed multiple potential fire positions within each region, ensuring that no fire is placed too close to another. This forces the player to navigate through the terrain, avoiding a direct path and encouraging exploration.
I began by using physical overlays, layering transparent sheets of tracing paper to experiment with the spatial relationships between the different areas. This has allowed me to test the connections between environments, as well as to refine the placement of spawn points and fires. During this process, I’ve also checked the potential movement directions of the player to ensure that they have a variety of routes to take while avoiding overly straightforward paths. Each area features multiple possible spawn points, and I’ve strategically placed fires in each environment to create a challenging but fair progression. By spacing the fires apart, I’ve ensured that players cannot simply follow a linear path from one fire to the next.
This layering technique has helped me iterate quickly on the design, adjusting paths and fire locations based on the flow of exploration. Once the basic design was refined, I’ve transferred the layout into Unreal Engine. I focused on ensuring that no fire is too close to another, and that the player has to take detours and explore different regions to reach each fire. I’ve also incorporated verticality, environmental hazards, and enemy placements to create a dynamic and varied experience.
Tools & Technical Info
Unreal Engine | Photoshop | Assets: Custom assets made by our 3D artist in Blender
