Game Kit Level
Level Designer | 2022
This project came to be during my time at Champlain College, during which I created this level as part of a Level Design II course. Over the course of a whole semester, myself and several dozen other designers were tasked with taking a sequence of levels from ideation to completion, through multiple rounds of evaluation, testing, critique, and iteration.
This level was built using Unity’s 2D game kit— the project’s intent was to measure my ability to construct a compelling and well thought-out level within an existing set of mechanics and an existing narrative.
For this project, I used used Unity engine, C# for scripting, and Git for version control.
As mentioned, this project was built using Unity’s 2D game kit, including its character controller, interactable logic, and visual assets.
Embedded below are a pair of documents from different points in the level’s development, that each offer a look into my process for level design and all of its various considerations.
This document is from early in the level’s life cycle, during initial concepting. It includes an overview of the level’s context in the broader game, as well as some gameplay goals. It also breaks down the level section-by-section, and includes a pacing curve for planning the level’s timing. Lastly, I included a brief reflection on the concepting process at the very end of the document.
Level Planning Document
Level Design Document
This document is from much later on in the level’s development, after several rounds of prototyping and iteration. It features more detailed breakdowns of the content included in the initial concepting doc, and in addition includes: a breakdown of the level’s visual aesthetics; a breakdown of the level into prospect and refuge spaces, as explained in Christopher Totten’s An Architectural Approach to Level Design; a further breakdown of the aforementioned reward spaces into Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman’s reward types as laid out in Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals; a much more robust breakdown of the level’s sections, now including gameplay screenshots; a more developed pacing curve including difficulty, tension, and frustration; and finally a much more involved reflection from the end of the project.
Taken in tandem, these documents represent several months of careful testing, reflection, and iteration on this level, from first conception all the way to the postmortem. I hope these documents help shed some light on my level design process!