Sunlit Night
Summary: A First-Person. Grid-Based, Dungeon Crawler with an emphasis on exploration. I designed half the levels for this game, specifically the levels in the second half of the game and the tutorial.
Role: Level Designer
Project: Classwork
Development time: August 2023-April 2024
Made Using: Unity
A movement shooter i worked on at DigiPen from 2022 to 2023. I was the lead systems designer and also worked on various levels!
Lesson Learned:
Late Game Level Design: when nearing the latter half of the game it’s important to make levels that can properly scale with the difficulty set up by other designers as well as review the skills the player has learned in new ways!
Level Theming: Theming a level around a certain mechanic or aesthetic can lead to some great design challenges that can create both exciting scenarios for you to design and for the player to experience!
Decision Making: Sometimes a team will be indecisive about a potential idea and could possibly cause problems if it goes on for too long. If this happens, its important to call it out and work with the team to find a strong direction!
Compromising: Sometimes, your superiors really want an idea in the level that you believe will clash with your own ideas or you have an idea that would work but the team doesn’t have the time nor resources to do it. It is important to find a way to preserve those ideas while making them function within the conditions given!
Concepting the Tutorial Level
As soon as development started, I and a fellow level designer on the team got to work. Our first order of business was making a tutorial level that functioned both as a tech demo and a tutorial level.
I went ahead and created 4 different level concepts for the first level, this first one had an emphasis on covering all the bases of the game including movement, combat, exploration and item interaction.
This first level concept eventually became the first level implemented into the game.
This was the second concept for the first level.
This one had way less enemies than the first concept since I wanted this one to focus more on movement and item interaction first since those would be the two main methods that the player interacted with the world.
I had left the enemies at the end to serve simultaneously. However, this would’ve been too much to throw at the player in one go, meaning this level was scrapped.
This level 1 concept was made with the idea of making it quicker to finish than the previous two. It basically took pieces that were in concept 1 and streamlined them.
However, this resulted in a level that didn’t explore enough the mechanics of the game as we wanted to, meaning it was scrapped.
This level didn’t have any enemies at all! Instead, I wanted this concept to focus on tutorializing another one of the core mechanics of our game, pressure plates.
This is why the level had much more of a maze-like structure to it to show how different pressure plate puzzles in the game could look like in future levels.
However, as combat became more key to the gameplay loop this level became more redundant, resulting in it being scrapped.
Creating the Tutorial Level
As seen in the sketch concept, this section of the tutorial level was designed to teach the player how to move.
The reason for the diagonal lines was to show the player that they can turn and or strafe to move around.
The tools we had at our disposal allowed us to scale the roof of our levels to any size as well as add decorations.
I decided to keep the roof low to make sure the player focuses on the tutorial. I also added the small rock decoration, so the player knows where they need to go since we were unable to add more textures to the game.
This is the section after the corridor. I made this section slightly taller as not only a way to tease the future scale of some levels, but also allow them more field of view.
This section tutorialized keys and doors. To secretly teach the player that exploration is rewarded, I made it so that they needed to collect two different keys, one of which was hidden in a small corridor.
This section is right after the keys room and is the second enemy the player encounters in the game. However, unlike the first enemy, this one moves in the square path seen.
Each enemy has one of these paths which level designers oversaw designing and setting. This portion is designed to show that not every enemy needs to be killed to progress through the level as there is a large opening in the center of the square where the player can evade the enemy with.
This is another section of the tutorial which is meant to be a more advanced enemy dodging challenge.
There are two pillars (The mostly flat dark grey pieces inside the enemy path) that the player needs to go between to dodge the enemy, showing that some pathways may be more difficult to dodge than others.
I also included a treasure chest here. This chest was always collected by players since it always ends up in their line of sight when dodging the enemy. This is intentional to show that some loot may be hidden within danger.
This is the first combat encounter zone in the level.
The long corridor would serve as build up for the player as they finally became confronted with real enemies.
The tight space was made to make sure the player is always not too far from an enemy but gives them plenty of room to hop around in with the houses and corridors.
Creating the Hole:
This was the first version of The Hole level, this level was designed to show up in the late game where the player will likely have stronger status and more knowledge on the gameplay.
There were several differences from this first version to the second version, including several changed enemy placements and a completely different ending.
The ending was designed to house two very powerful enemies at the end that could one-shot the player if they were not careful. However, variant enemies were removed from the game at a later point, meaning that segment had to be redone.
Whenever a level needs to be redone, I tend to resketch it while having the other level in mind.
This was the sketch for the second version of The Hole alongside the Second version of a later developed level, Glass Maze.
I had improved my sketching skills between sketching to include further detail on them. including chest locations, enemy pathing and even shaded sections for a new mechanic that was developed around the time of this photo, distortion zones.
This photo is of The Hole before adding in all the decorative aspects of the level, I raised the roof of this level very high to give a sense of awe to the player.
I also made sure to make the level feel dangerous by making it deep enough that the player cannot see the bottom of the level at any point.
The Player’s Starting position is within a small little hidden section of the level seen at the center of the photo. When the player leaves they are meant to feel awe struck at the sheer size and scope of the level since they can see the roof of the cave by this point and then later how deep it goes.
After that emotion they’ll then be guided by the stalagmites onto the next section of the level which takes them away from the sights.
However the player knows they will get back to it since they see various chests that don’t seem to be accessible via normal means! The first secret of the level is also hidden at the start where if the player goes the opposite direction of the intended path, they are rewarded with a chest!
This section is meant to be an offshoot of the cave. In the game’s narrative, the idea is that the player is descending an eldritch object.
This section was supposed to be an underground lab that got trapped and corrupted by the eldritch object. I designed it to be more puzzle centric to call back to earlier levels as well.
This portion of the level is meant to be the hardest block puzzle in the game, the player enters by passing through one of the pressure plates, signifying to them that a block puzzle is on the way.
Once they find the blocks, they will find that there are multiple ways to possibly solve this puzzle since there are various pathways that the player could use to push the blocks around and reposition themselves with.
When playtesting we found players employed a surprising variety of paths to solve this problem!
This portion of the level is meant to be the hardest block puzzle in the game, the player enters by passing through one of the pressure plates, signifying to them that a block puzzle is on the way.
Once they find the blocks, they will find that there are multiple ways to possibly solve this puzzle since there are various pathways that the player could use to push the blocks around and reposition themselves with.
When playtesting we found players employed a surprising variety of paths to solve this problem!
This is meant to be an advanced timed pressure plate puzzle. Seen near the center right there is a door with a red lock, this door can only be opened with a red pressure plate, even then, the red pressure plate is timed and locks the door again after a certain amount of steps have been taken.
The player will pass by the door first and recognize it is the same color as the door from the previous puzzle meaning they will search for the pressure plate; the challenge comes from successfully figuring out the most effective path while also trying to avoid enemies!
One of the key things I wanted to include in this level was lots of secrets, as such the little island in the middle of the level were created.
These little islands served as a way to incentivize the player to explore since they are visible from the start of the game and filled with loot. They are accessed via teleporters which are usually found behind locked doors which usually require a key or a timing challenge.
Another thing is that some islands also give additional information to the player such as knowledge of future secrets in the level. For example, this island shows the player the location of the turquoise key, which is used in a later secret.
When players pass through this narrow hallway, they will encounter a yellow door on to their right. This was done to entice the player into the next major section of the level in a simple but effective way.
However, many players when playtesting grew curious of the door and actually found its secret, going in the other direction and attempting the timed pressure plate challenge.
The pathway of both enemies seen in the area with the purple bubbles are both very tight squares with a little bit of variance in their timing, making for a tough but rewarding challenge!
This portion of the level originally designed with a simple choice. The player is confronted with two ways to go around the pillar. Taking the long way, which is safer but takes longer, or take the shorter path that puts you in direct danger of the enemy.
However, after multiple playtests everyone simply chose the daring path because the wait was long enough for it to be safer than the long route.
So instead, I decided to make the longer route the one that got you the key to the door with the pink lock seen on the left.
Nearing the end of the level I wanted to do one final timed pressure plate challenge. This was meant to be the hardest. I primed the player on taking long borderless corridors with the start of the final section.
Then, when the player reaches the safe area they will see an orange locked door, if they turn around, they will see the okey to the orange door on the other side of the challenge, this was to encourage the player to give it a shot!
To make matters more convenient, when the player completes the challenge and gets the reward and key, they are teleported back to the orange door which unlocks and puts the player directly in front of the final teleporter of the level.
This is the refactored ending portion of the level, previously it was a small maze with two strong enemies.
When the variant enemies got scrapped, I instead remade this section to be one final check on the player, by tasking them to avoid one moving enemy and one final stationary enemy that tests the player on their combat skills.
Making the Glass Maze:
Once I had finished The Tutorial and The Hole levels, I continued working on one more level for the game, this one intended to go before The Hole, which would become the final level.
Late into development the team discovered we could make textures somewhat transparent. I really liked this new technology we found and wanted to make something out of it. That Is how the idea for The Glass Maze was born!
This first experimented with several layouts of how to take advantage of these transparent walls. Such as a pillar maze or a push block puzzle that lets you see through the walls as well as the Titular glass maze, which would’ve been a maze of transparent walls.
This was the first version of Glass Maze built. This photo was taken just before the transparency effect was implemented into the game but was built with it in mind.
Some changes have already been made to the level by this point, however. For example, there no longer being a teleporter at the end that takes you outside the maze to the exit. Instead, the exit is now simply at the end of the maze. This is due to the level editor not supporting changing the players Y-axis.
The reason why the level was in a giant box was because narratively, this section of the game was going to be in a research lab, so I wanted to invoke the feeling of being a lab rat, it would’ve also functioned as a way for the non-transparent floor to stand out further since our skybox made it difficult to see.
This photo was shown earlier when discussing The Hole.
You can also see the second revision of Glass Maze, this version factors in not only playtests done of the level but also incorporates several features that were requested by the team.
Specifically, the shaded areas which are meant to represent a mechanic called Distortion Zones.
This is the final version of The Glass Maze that made it into the game. The box was removed from the level to showcase the newly created skybox for the game.
There was also one more major change made to the level. There was no longer one giant distortion zone on the maze portion of the level but instead several smaller distortion zones.
The reason for this was to make it easier for players to navigate the maze without getting lost or frustrated.
In this level, the player begins in this small corridor and will immediately see the locked doors in front of them.
I designed this section so that the player will be able to notice both keys and make the connection that they need to find a way to get to those keys, thus pushing them to continue with the level.
This was one of the first areas designed for the game. The idea is that now with these transparent walls, the player could see where enemies were and plan around it.
This section would represent this by having one long corridor that the player could see and track the enemy, letting them figure out their next course of action.
This section was meant to be a more advanced block puzzle that took advantage of the transparent walls. The cyan blocks needed to be moved to the blue pressure plates that are marked. The player could see the enemies around them and plan to push them.
This was one of the puzzles where players could get soft locked, unfortunately, which is why I widened the area to allow the player to get around the block without soft locking, later on we also made the blocks “melt” over time and respawn.
This section was dramatically changed from version 1. Originally a much wider pillar maze, it has now been made into a square maze, with a distortion zone.
Originally, distortion zones were going to be a more important part of our system mechanics, however due to time constraints, they were reduced to a simple fog of war.
This section was reworked to become a fog of war puzzle where players had to navigate this small section while also having visibility reduced.
This section was designed to be a tutorial on how timed pressure plates work. I realized that using transparent walls would be a perfect way to show this mechanic.
The player can see the pressure plate at the end of the corridor and must land on the pressure plate to continue with the level; when this pressure plate is pressed, they will see the door open.
The door is designed so that it takes a slightly larger number of steps than usual to complete the puzzle to allow the player some leeway.
The is if the final portion of the level, the titular Glass Maze. The idea is that the player can clearly see the floor, but the number of transparent walls accumulates, creating a similar blindness to actual mazes.
This creates a maze-like level that can circumvent the traditional problem with maze levels of getting lost and not knowing! As a backup the maze is also secretly easy if you know the trick. There are in fact no bad paths, so long as you continue forward, the player will progress.
Very late into development I was requested to also add distortion zones to this section. Originally, I was going to make the whole maze a distortion zone but that made it too annoying to cross, so I decided to make it small portions of the maze instead!
Scrapped level:The Depths
This is The Depths, a level that was planned to go after The Hole but due to time constraints was scrapped. The idea of The Depths is that it’s supposed to be what’s at the bottom of The Hole, which is why its so narrow.
You’ll notice that in the sketch it is titled the Sisyphean depths, this is because the main gimmick of the level was that it was a continuous series of block puzzles. Pictured right below the sketch of The Depths is another scrapped level titled The Nest. It was supposed to go right before Glass Maze and would have had the largest number of enemy encounters in the game.
This was meant to be a test of the player and a reinforcement ton the philosophy we had that not every enemy needed to be defeated since the sheer number of enemies would likely kill most players who tried to defeat them all.
When designing this level, the director had the idea that the further into the game you go, it would be like descending some kind of eldritch plant that would defy physics.
As such the level was designed to have no walls. This made for a level that would’ve been aesthetically different from the others and been a very fun engaging point for the player.
Seen in this photo is a major reason why the level was scrapped, due to an issue with how we were handling our level editing tools, walls, when removed, would also remove any guardrails for objects in the scene, resulting in this image here.
Later on, we created a fix for this but by this point the level had been scrapped.
In this beginning section of the level, I show the main gimmick, long alleyways of pushing blocks.
Normally this would be very boring so when trying to find ways to improve the level, I discovered enemies can essentially float, allowing for interesting routing challenges to be created.
Each enemy you see on screen has a pathway that makes them float off the path and back again.
Another objective I had when creating this level was to make it short and full of side objectives. This was because originally, there was going to be a final boss level right after this one that was meant to be fully a puzzle level which would take a while to complete.
That final level was only going to have 1 enemy at the very end, the final boss. Because of this, The Depths was going to have high level enemies along with last chances to collect stat boosting treasure.
This is the first major side objective in the level where players had to complete a classic three block slide puzzle.
This area is meant to be somewhat of the middle ground that showcases the next trick of this level, having to manage multiple blocks at the same time.
As you can see here there are 3 blocks in close vicinity, the idea is to use each one to land on a pressure plate that’s nearby.
These all trigger a door that appears near the end of the level. This portion is a simplified version of a later puzzle further in the level.
This was one of the other side objectives in the level which I called the spiral.
This section is an expansion of what was taught at the start of the level, mixed with some tactics shown later in the level of when to curve the blocks the player also had to avoid the various enemies while pushing this block as they slowly get to the center.
The reward was intended to be very valuable but by this point variable chest loot wasn’t implemented yet.
This final section is what leads up to the final boss. The idea is that 3 of the pressure plates in the level would open the three gates that would lead to the exit represented by the purple sphere.
However, there were also two extra gates that would open if the player completed the side objectives, resulting in some extra boons into what would’ve been the final level of the game.
This rewarded exploration of the level and is one of the neat players rewards I was able to put in because of the shorter length of the level.