An early VDD explaining the core gameplay elements of Dread Rally that remained consistent throughout the project. Each faction/car type emphasizes a different type of play: Esotechnica (blue car) focuses on speed, A-Star (red car) focuses on tricks and style, and Brute Corp (green car) focuses on combat. An important element not mentioned here are speedgates: checkpoints on each track that must be passed within a certain amount of ever-decreasing time. Otherwise, the player faces a serious attack from the audience (see right paragraph) and will be disqualified if they take too long to reach the next speedgate. My specific factory track (fourth in the Mars rally) made use of this mechanic to keep players moving as fast as possible, making up for the lack of length in novelty (driving 360 degrees around the pipes shown below) and difficulty (laser turrets and conveyors). 

This project was the first I'd been onboarded to a team, meaning I became a team member when the project had already been worked on for a few months. As such, I had to learn the original team's goals and their expectations of me in order to be an effective and productive addition to the team. Luckily I was brought on as a level designer from the beginning of my time working on this, so didn't have to learn many technical ins-and-outs. More generally though, this taught me a valuable lesson in being a real team player and the importance of both asking the right questions and properly taking direction for the sake of a collective vision. I also collaborated with other designers to develop a core level design philosophy for the game, ranging from structural elements to how hazards worked, helping me learn how other specialists within game design think and how to prioritize a list of cool ideas into a defined set that actually works for a project.