SONDER

* level design project 001

CONCEPT

UNREAL ENGINE 5.3

BLUEPRINTS

TRELLO

8 WEEKS

GROUP PROJECT (12)

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

SONDER is an immersive 2.5D puzzle platforming game for two players (online and local) with combat arenas. The main focus of the game is collaboration where the players experience an ominous narrative with darker themes.

This was a group assignment and I was the sole level designer of the project and focused mainly on the linear puzzle platforming levels, aswell as collaborating with the game designer on the combat arenas.

ITERATIVE LEVEL DESIGN

Designing and refining 2 linear platforming puzzle levels for co-op gameplay from whitebox to a cohesive world, aswell as 3 smaller combat arenas

PUZZLE DESIGN FOR TWO

Creating fun, engaging and intuitive puzzles that demands communication and logical thinking with a reasonable difficulty curve

ENGAGING SCRIPTED EVENTS

Making micro narratives for exciting and surprising moments to break up the gameplay

INTRODUCING MECHANICS

Twice the mechanics - twice the fun! Making sure both players understands their mechanics and how they synergize without using any text

STORY THROUGH LEVEL ART

Creating an immersive experience where the world is in focus

BLUEPRINT SCRIPTING

Prototyping for a level art tool and basic gameplay elements

KEY POINTS

FULL PLAYTHROUGH

ITERATIVE LEVEL DESIGN

Before I started working in Unreal Editor, I started making gameplay flowcharts to quickly sketch out the general flow of the levels, aswell as getting the idea of what the players should feel throughout the game.

These weren’t followed strictly but worked rather as a general overview for me to fall back on if I got stuck on an area. I also created level maps with pen and paper to quickly sketch out puzzles before trying them in the engine.

During the projects first weeks, I worked closely with the game designer and programmers to help form the environmental mechanics that were important for the level design. These varied from different versions of buttons to press, moving platforms and a dynamic camera system and more.

Since the game is designed to be for two players, I would often hold small internal playtests when a puzzle was whiteboxed, to see if my colleagues could cooperate to figure out the problems. If they completed it, I tried to find people with less knowledge of the game.

Each week we held a playtest with external testers and if a puzzle was too hard or not intuitive enough I reworked them or in some instances, scrapped them completely for a better experience.

I kept on iterating on the areas with big and small adjustments throughout the entire project.

Concept sketch

Whitebox

Finished area

PUZZLE DESIGN FOR TWO

Since one of our most important pillar was cooperation, all aspects of the level design needed to incentivize cooperative gameplay with communication between the players. The players gets 2 gameplay mechanics each, and the challenge in the puzzles is mainly that the players needs to figure out together how and in what order they need to utilize the mechanics to progress through the levels.

Designing intuitive puzzles is a beast on its own and one of my biggest challenges was to balance the difficulty curve and making sure the puzzles never felt impossible or unintuitive.

My vision for when the player enters a new room is to get them thinking “how do we tackle this” to “this might work” to finally get that lightbulb moment where it all clicks. To execute the puzzles I often incorporated platforming elements, however the platforming needed to be on the easier side so it wouldn't be frustrating if a player fails to execute them properly.

To balance the difficulty, I started with puzzles with more limited options for the players before gradually making them more complex. To reward the players, I often followed up a more tricky puzzle with some cool scenery or an easier timing based platforming section for them to quickly breeze through.

I worked with the dynamic camera system that one of our programmers, Carl Björkman created to always give the players a clear view of the gameplay, and making sure the platforming was more of a fun flavor than too demanding.

ENGAGING SCRIPTED EVENTS

To break up the gameplay and make the environment more dynamic and surprising, I scripted different events. These were often dramatic in nature and were often used to create a sense of excitement or fear, creating more of a push element in the otherwise slow paced puzzle sections.

I tried to use the environment mechanics creatively to save development time so almost all scripted events utilize the moving platforms in different ways. These included a bridge breaking down, a moment where the walls close in on the players (star wars reference!), a calm elevator ride aswell as two more jumpscare-like moments.

During early playtesting, the testers would often react with excitement and surprise to these events, so I used that knowledge to come up with more ways to surprise the players.

INTRODUCING MECHANICS

With having two players came the challenge of introducing more mechanics at once. Just because one of the players understands the mechanic doesn’t mean the other one does. The character mechanics also had different ways of synergizing with eachother. This meant that the introductions needed to be extremely focused to not overwhelm and confuse the players.

Introduce it...

Let them practice...

Watch them master it!

One of the more simple mechanics was a movable box that the players could use to hold a button down for a platform to move.

In the first box-puzzle there is only one button and box to teach how they should be used.

In the second room there are more buttons to push and the players also have to use their character mechanics to reach the box.

In the final box puzzle, there are many buttons and two boxes and the players needs to think more creatively and use one box to push another one over it. To gradually give more options to the players, complexity is increased and the solution is more satisfying.

Another example is the Robots ability to use it’s pulse ability to pulse up Soul, and for it to pulse up itself on Soul. To teach this more complex interactions without a wall of text, our 3D artist created decals giving the players an idea of what they need to do.

These were used to give the player hints on how to use it without explaining them explicitly for a more immersive experience.

STORY THROUGH LEVEL ART

To make the world come alive I translated the prototype-like whiteboxes to complete believable areas (except for lighting which our tech artist Tova Wesström worked with). One of our pillars were immersive atmosphere so it was important to make a world that the players got sucked into and wanted to progress through and explore.

With only one 3D artist, I had limited decorative meshes to work with. I tried to use them creatively to not get repetitive and give the players new vistas to enjoy. One method was to make sure the rooms had different sizes and depths. In the puzzle sections I made sure to keep the background more clean to not overwhelm the players. In between these I used the depth of the world to build up a cohesive world with distant objects that the players could enjoy behind them.

Since the game contains no text, a lot of the storytelling is told through level art and design. While discussing the game's art direction with the art team, we decided to get inspired by liminal spaces to create an eerie, abandoned and post-apocalyptic feeling for the players. I did rigorous research on liminal spaces and tried to incorporate as many elements for them as possible.

BLUEPRINT SCRIPTING

To help show the rest of my team and the programmers the intention of different mechanics, I prototyped basic blueprints using mostly trigger boxes and various nodes for controlling different components. One of the more important level art tool I scripted was to be able to “paint out” 3D meshes over a spline, using constructive PCG.

I followed a tutorial and made some adjustments for it to work well in our game, and this saved me a lot of time creating the level art as the area contains many railings which this tool was perfect for.

Another example of the environmental mechanics I scripted was a light switching on when the players got in proximity, which was used for a jumpscare effect.

BONUS: MO-CAP ACTING

If you read this far, thank you! I wanted to share that I also was the actor for both characters in the game’s cutscenes. This was a very fun experience to be able to do.

I would say it helped that I have experience working with dancing and my goal was to make sure I captured the different personalities of the characters through movement. The animations captured were cleaned up by our animator Sarah Abbas and the cutscenes were then implemented by our game designer Carl Montgomerie.