SAMSARA
Level / Quest Designer
Unreal Engine 5
2 Week development time
SAMSARA is an action-adventure RPG that fuses elements of Buddhism with souls-like gameplay. I joined the company making it for two weeks as part of their design skills bootcamp, and created a level that will be featured in the forthcoming PC game.
Don't worry - I have their permission to show everything below!
Contributions
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Sketched and iterated on a level design
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Greyboxed a level with around 5 minutes of gameplay
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Balanced loot and enemy encounters within my level
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Designed and implemented a quest with a branching narrative
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Used blueprints to enhance and provide functionality to my level
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Participated in stand-ups and gave feedback on peers' levels
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Pitched my level, quest, and dialogue to the team at Infinity 27
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QUEST DESIGN
Before getting into Unreal, I designed a side-quest to tie into the game's central themes. Without overscoping, this quest needed multiple outcomes, and would inform the overall level design.
Buddhist philosophy inspired many game mechanics, and I took that inspiration into my quest - providing several outcomes and characters for the player to align their views with.
I love the Deus Ex and Witcher game series, mostly because of the ways they accounted for player choices; that also inspired my plans for the ways the quest could play out.
Early designs can be seen on the right, with an implementation specification below. Click the images to read their text.
LEVEL DESIGN
To begin, I created a sketch around my design philosophies:
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Claustrophobic & Maze-like, but not confusing
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The feeling of entering the belly of the beast
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Nature and ancient architecture overlapping
After greyboxing and receiving some playtest feedback from my peers, I found that my level was too challenging, but was soundly meeting players' expectations of the Soulslike genre. Our levels were encouraged to provide around five minutes of gameplay, so my decision to have 'points of no return' made sure the player steadily made progress, even if they engaged with optional platforming challenges and side-paths.
A second iteration saw enemy placements updated and geometry changing to make combat flow better. This helped the level to loop back onto itself - an important feature of Soulslike level design. Overall, the level was well-received and saw praise for its inventive use of existing game systems.
Click the images for a closer look.
PITCHING
At the end of the bootcamp, I showed off my creations to the company's designers, artists, and programmers.
My pitch includes a talk-through of the greybox, my thoughts while designing, and an overview of the quest and characters within.
All in all, the bootcamp was a great time, and I'm thankful to everyone at Infinity 27 for the greatly rewarding experience!