Reactor Arena

My concept for this level was a nuclear reactor, which inspired me to give it a frantic and aggressive tone.

To achieve this, I kept the arena small. Bringing the players closer together with minimal cover to ensure they’re always at risk.

As the game supports up to four players, we build each arena out of four identical sections. This means that when a player respawns, they're never put at a disadvantage.

The death pits allowed me to place flat cover without risking janky scenarios where players are peaking around thin terrain.

I wanted to add a unique terrain feature to the arena, and the central star stoodout as it was always accessible and a big target for interaction (getting hit with rockets).

The core fills up with each hit before dropping down as waves of radioactive goo corden off each corner. The waves don’t destroy projectiles, so it makes the arena extremely open. This adds a defensive tool to block pursuing opponents, or as an offensive one to open up new angles of attack.

• I blocked out, built the arena, and animated the core in Blender.

• The textures for the acid and decals were made in Substance Designer.

• I put it all together with post-processing and VFX in UE5