ARTHUR HACHE
LEVEL DESIGNER
Grey Project
The goal of this project is to create a complete map for a Metroidvania, while simultaneously developing its mechanics and universe.
Role: Level Designer, Game Designer
Year: 2021
Duration: 3 days
Software Used: Photoshop, Dungeon Scrawl
Story
Your character is a mage, born from the marriage of two members of two rival clans. Unable to accept this, one of the clans exterminated your family members, but you survived the attack. Your character's goal is to assassinate the members of this clan.
After several years of hunting and fighting, your character arrives in a technologically advanced city, where the last members of the clan are hiding.
However, the city is very aggressive towards outsiders, as a mysterious disease is infecting its inhabitants, believed to have originated from the mages themselves.
Gameplay
The game is a 2D Metroidvania in which the character can run, jump and especially attack. This is the main mechanic of the game: the player can find different combat techniques in the world, he can equip 4 different ones, which allows to vary the playing styles according to the desires and the opponents to face. As in any Metroidvania, it will be necessary to find abilities (here called Major Spells) to be able to advance and access places blocked during a first visit. There are 4 of them: the double jump, the grappling hook, breathing to be able to go underwater, and teleportation to return to the checkpoints found throughout the game.
Level Design Intentions
Once the gameplay and the setting were established, I tackled what interests us here: the level design. I already had a general idea of ​​how to build the game map, the main objective being for the different areas to be naturally connected to each other, and for the critical path to be built around a loop.
Initially, I had the idea that the player could travel through the areas in any order they wished, but this is where several difficulties arose. First of all, balancing: if the player can customize their attack kit, it will be impossible for them to traverse certain areas, even though the level design allows it, or it will be too powerful for others, which in both cases causes frustration. There is also a major difficulty in constructing the level design related to major spells. Since the game is a Metroidvania, being able to explore areas in any order you want, while blocking the player with abilities they don't have, will create a great difficulty in balancing the routes taken by the player. So I decided to create a single route; the other areas and their accesses will be available once certain major spells are obtained.
Complete map
Here's the map of the zones in its entirety. The hub that will serve as the player's hub is located in the center of the map; it will be possible to go there after exploring an area, to buy items or upgrade equipment. Most of the areas are connected to each other, which was the goal of this project. Once all the major spells have been obtained, the player will be able to traverse the entire map and use paths that were previously unusable.
The areas
As explained previously, the themes and bestiary of the zones are divided into four sections:
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All the areas at the bottom of the map will be wild and inhospitable, completely contaminated by the disease, and entirely underground. The player will experience a feeling of claustrophobia.
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The areas in the top right will be the highest, far removed from the disease. The scenery and bestiary are therefore very rich and well-guarded, with cutting-edge technology present, and the player will experience a feeling of vertigo.
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The areas in the center are occupied by so-called "normal" beings. The disease has not yet reached them, but its shadow weighs heavily on their inhabitants. Most are not hostile toward the player.
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All the areas on the left are located quite far from civilization. The disease is therefore present there, and the inhabitants of the small villages have been transformed. There will therefore be a mix of enemies from the lower and middle zones.
Navigation between areas
To illustrate all this, I used Dungeon Scrawl, a website that allows you to create level design very quickly. Being a 2D Metroidvania, this was very useful to me. The player starts in the central area and will therefore have the possibility of exploring the 4 adjacent areas. However, he will be blocked either by the power of the enemies in front of him, or by the impossibility of moving forward, because he will not have the necessary major spell. The level design will look like this: he will have to start at the bottom of the map and then go up by forming a circle around the hub in a clockwise direction. Once all the major spells are defeated, he will then find himself again in the area under the hub, he will then be able to go up the map with now all the movement abilities with him.
Inside the areas
Navigation between zones must be seamless. The game uses two very different worlds, magic and technology, and some zones are very different in terms of themes. The player must be able to move from an abandoned village populated by magical creatures to a wall guarded by robots protecting a futuristic city, without breaking their immersion. This is why some zones will be visible from others. For example, from the village, the wall will be visible in the distance, and the closer you get, the more visible it will be. The idea is to ensure that the closer you get to a new zone, the more elements of it are present or visible on the screen.
This can also affect gameplay elements. For example, the entire lower part of the Underground District is flooded, which creates a perfect transition between this area and the Seabed. Furthermore, this shows the player that they will be able to dive freely into the water later in the game.
Boss and Environment Concept
Obviously, Major Spells will be obtained from Bosses. These Bosses will be targets that the player character must eliminate, and they will use a Major Spell that will be obtained after the fight. For the story, each of these Bosses will have a different reason for participating in the extermination of the hero's family.