Sky Mage - Platformer Blockout

Project Summary

Linear platformer level, using a premade character able to fly with a fantasy inspired setting.

My main theme for this level was: Floating Islands. I aimed to a short level that would introduce the player to this fantasy world. There are multiple sections focusing in certain gameplay aspects and visually distinct areas of the world.

Project Details

Personal project
Developed in 4 days
Unreal Engine 5
Platformer
3rd person

Pre-Production

Gathering References

I focused on gathering references both to inspire some locations and to find some visually interesting landmarks and points of interest (POIs). I also looked into different fantasy styles to find what color schemes and lightning could work well with this character.

As you can see in the references, the style ended up focusing on islands filled with vegetation and stone structures with a clear sky as a background. I used this as the base for the world.

Assets

Usually I work only with primitive shapes and use a modeling tool to create more intricate and specific shapes. In this case I didn't have a lot of time on my hands and I realized I had a couple of assets that could work well with this setting.

For a while I wanted to try creating a blockout using mostly assets. My objective was not to create a fully dressed level but to put myself in a position where assets are already available.

There are definitely some advantages and disadvantages to this method. In this case I believe I ended up relying too much on assets and it may fall outside what's considered a blockout but it was a nice learning experience.

Initial Design

I didn't have a lot of time on my hands to work on this project so for the initial design I tried to simplify as much as I could and focused on the main aspects.

Instead of drawing a complete layout of the level I decided how many sections was the level going to have and what was the purpose and theme of each one.

I ended up with four sections:

Initial area: Teaches basic platforming and flight. Bright, green and happy.
Caves: Introduces environmental damage (shard crystals). Darker in lightning to put the focus on the shard crystals.
Misty town: Challenges player navigation through fog. Even with the mist is not scary. Light is placed strategically to guide the player.
Final flight: Focus on flying through speed rings. The mist disappears and everything is bright again. The environment is full of fantasy elements.

Blockout

Character

Character movement and mechanics are the main things that will determine how the level is.

The first thing I did was playing around with the character and defining a set of metrics. For this character in particular the key aspects were the jumping distance and jumping height.

The player doesn't have a flying limit but I still tried to balance the time spent in the air vs in the ground.

Variety & Challenge

Even in a short experience like this, it's key to have a good pacing that keeps the player engage. To work on this I focused on:

Increasing the challenge as the level progresses and the player gets better at the game.
Introducing new mechanics and challenging the assumptions the player has made.
Having visually distinct areas that help the player feel the progress made while making sure they keep their curiosity about the world.

Exploration

To incentivize exploration by the player, I added some optional collectibles throughout the map.

The level is fairly short and mostly linear but I still tried to create small corners out of immediate sight to reward player exploration.

I also used lightning, small points of interest and NPCs to guide the player through the main path and push them forward.

Top View

Design Techniques

Landmarks & POIs

From the very beginning I focused on having multiple levels of landmarks and Points of Interest. Each area has distinct features and elements that make them feel separate from each other.

To help the player see the level continuity I introduced from the very beginning the giant Bell in the background. When the player reaches the final section they can see the bell from up-close tracing their memory back to the beginning of the level.

This however could be improved by adding small glimpses throughout the adventure tightening the player's relation to this landmark.

Giving Character to the World

I tried to use the fantasy setting to the fullest by adding giant impossible structures that would make the player question how and why are there.

For cases like these, the references gather at the beginning were extremely useful at creating these kind of scenes.

I also added NPCs that would help selling the player the bright, child-like fantasy of the world.

Retrospective

The biggest challenge with this level was the way the character was set up. The character's movement is mostly fine but the flying ability made it a challenge to create a fun level that didn't break. I did some adjustments on the character's jump but tried to keep everything as it was as a way to challenge myself (As a level designer in a real work environment, I wouldn't be able to tweak the character as I wanted)

If I had more time I would iterate more as I didn't have a lot of time to do it and this lead to some places where the flying skill can be abused to skip some platforming sections (Mainly the second half of the Cave section).

I would also focus on improving the spacing of each area. Most of the sections are a bit too short to allow the player to engage in each section's theme. The pacing of the level would benefit from letting the player spend more time in each challenge and then have a bit of extra room in between sections.