Gravebound

Level Description: Gravebound is a rougelike FPS game where the player must defeat waves of enemies in each area in order to gain new upgrades/abilities and move on to the next area. The game was made with a team of about 30 people and I worked as the level designer on the game. The whole level is divided into three areas, each with a unique encounter. There is the courtyard, the cathedral and the graveyard. The courtyard introduces the skeleton and imp enemies and is meant to be easy with few to no obstructions so the player can learn how to play and to kite enemies around the area. The cathedral introduces verticality and the gargoyle enemy. Lastly, the graveyard is meant to be the final and most challenging encounter. It introduces the healer enemy and has open space with varying elevations and obstacles that form paths in order to keep the player moving so as to not get trapped by enemies.

Papermaps

Design Goals/Inspirations: My main goal with the level was to make each encounter feel unique when compared to the others, both in how they felt to navigate and what the players did in them. I wanted each area to have the player feel as if they were flowing through it and not have to really think about where they need to move to until many enemies had spawned in. I took a lot of inspiration from Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal's level design to achieve this, especially with how I designed the graveyard encounter.

Changes during Development:  Originally the game was going to be a large open level in which enemies would constantly spawn around the player and move towards them, with more spawning as the game progressed. About a month and a half into development the team decided to move more towards wave based encounters with each being in a different part of the level. Having to overhaul the level was tough but a challenge I enjoyed. I was able to make each area more unique and tailor the encounters to show off different mechanics or enemies. For the final level, I ended up making a map similar to my 4th paper map but downsizing it to include the cathedral and two smaller outdoor areas which became the graveyard and the courtyard.

Post-mortem: This was my first time working on a team this large to make a game. It was a lot of fun being able to collaborate with so many people and see how quickly the game was coming together. Being the sole level designer on the team was great but also a big challenge. When making the level I also had to learn how the navmesh in Unreal worked. Since enemies are set up to just follow the player, getting stuck on ledges or around corners was a common issue, and learning how to use the navmesh system to fix the pathing was a challenge I enjoyed. The main issue was that enemies in the cathedral wouldn't jump down if the player dropped from the second floor. I used the navlinks and worked with the programming team to make custom ones that solved the issue. I hope to work with more teams in the future as I really enjoyed seeing everyone's Ideas come together to make an amazing game.