About the project
Personal responsibilities
Level Design
Game Design
World Design
Details
Project Length - 14 weeks (half time)
Engine - Eggine (Developed in house)
Level Editor - Unity
Reference game - Alba
Download at itch.io
The Design Process
Creating a familiar yet intriguing world - In this project I wanted to challenge myself with designing a world that the player could freely explore at their own leisure. Together with my LD colleague Ofelia we began sketching a rough layout of the world defining the various biomes we wanted to include.
One of the first challenges we wanted to solve was the boundaries of the world. With the game being themed around the Swedish archipelagos we quickly decided that we should make a mountainous island. This allowed us to define the playable space in an easy to communicate way.
working in biomes
We divided the world into a couple of different biomes, each in their own layer so that we could work in the same scene at simultaneously. I was responsible for the Tutorial area as well as two more areas on the island.
Tutorializing effectively
There are a couple of different quests in the game. In most of them an Islander will ask you to do something for them e.g. collect a certain item, find a specific islander, scare away seagulls etc.
I wanted to teach the player this loop without overwhelming them by releasing them into the open world. Therefore I gated the player in the starting zone until they had completed the first quest.
The player enters a contained area where they’re taught the basics of the game
