Creating the Environment and Level Design
- nekiristailgame
- Apr 5, 2020
- 2 min read
Stone Allan
I have been taking the lead on the environment for our game Nekiri’s Tail. Through group collaboration and meetings, we decided on a desert city theme based around ancient Egypt. The group also accepted my suggestion to give the environment a small Dr. Seuss feeling with some exaggeration to buildings. Because we only have four artists on our team, I was the only one working on the environment for most of the time. Aubrey would also come and help with creating assets and texturing when I got backed up which has helped with keeping up on the rest of the game process.
All assets are created in Maya, the assets are low poly to help give the game a more cartoonish feeling which has reduced any major problems. As the player is controlling a cat as well as a child, the environment must feel large and tell a narrative because of ‘The Damned’. We must make sure that the assets work together flawlessly, so creating modular objects that can be used repetitively is a must for our game.
Designing a level takes a lot of work and trial and error in order to keep the player engaged. It can be difficult to stop yourself from designing a level that can be completed in a timely matter. We want each level to take no more than 8-10 minutes to complete, that may sound like a lot of time to some but when playing the game, it feels like nothing. Each level design begins on paper, then it goes to gray boxing within Unreal where we test to make sure each part of the level runs seamlessly. When we have the puzzle elements and narrative fleshed out is when we import the assets to the level, and it comes to life.
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