WILL KIMBER
Games Design portfolio
The Goal for creating this level was to create an an environment that utilized the mechanics. Creating this level helped me familiarize my self with Unreal engine 5 and using blueprints.
Original Plans for the level
Overview: The game is set in a world where climate change has become so extreme that it has forced people to live in underground caves to protect them from the harsh rays of the sun. The player, a messenger from a nearby town, discovers that the town they are visiting has suddenly been abandoned. The goal of the player is to navigate through the cave and town whilst reading notes, left behind for the messenger to deliver to other caves, that gradually reveal to the player what happened and why they left. For the player to traverse through the level, they will have to use methods such as setting up ziplines and rock climbing on the walls of the cave so that they can reach otherwise inaccessible areas.
​
Genre: Adventure
Setting: An Abandoned town built inside of a cave
Players Goals: To figure out why the cave is deserted and where the inhabitants went.
Opposition: Traversing The Environment and dodging sunrays.
Level Design
The level was created by using UE5's brush tools to block out the rough shape of the level and get the scale right compared to the size of the player character. Once that was complete, I used blender to refine the shapes and add any extra detail necessary to assist with the environmental storytelling of the level.
​
throughout the construction of the level, the environmental storytelling was a big factor. Because the game is narrative driven, the environment will play a part in gradually revealing more about the background of the cave to the character, as well as the notes they read. This was created by having abandoned buildings and towns, broken bridges, and objects strewn across different areas of the level.
​
The level also features prominent level design theories such as gating at the start of the level to introduce the player to the controls and mechanics and ensure they understand how to use them. Breadcrumbs in the form of lights dotted around to help guide the player. and affordance by having all walls the player could climb on be the same colour.
Process of constructing the level, and screenshot of the final level in unreal engine
Mechanic Design
The mechanics in the level were to give the player more interesting ways of traversing and exploring the play space. These mechanics were climbing and ziplines. These allowed the player to now move up and down in level giving them access to previously inaccessible areas. To create the mechanics I used Unreal engines blueprints.
These are some examples of the blueprints i created. The zipline works by having a spline connected to two predefined start and end points. Then a mesh is attached to the spline and given the transform of it to give a visual representation to the player. Once the player is inside the trigger at the start of the zipline and presses the 'e' Key, the position of the player is set to the spline and moves along it for the duration of the timeline. During this period, the controls for the player are disabled so they are unable to move until the end of the zipline.
​
The climbing system works by having a line trace from the player to detect if a wall is present and close enough. If it is when the player jumps, the movement mode of the player is switched to flying and the controls are changed to up, down, left and right movement.
Examples of
climbing and
zipline mechanics