Crawl Space // March 2021
Product Owner / Level Designer
School Project
Unity
Top-Down Stealth
6 developers (3 designers, 3 artists)
7 weeks
CONCEPT
A dark take on the top-down stealth genre. You are a fragile predator escaping a spaceship. Avoid enemies, take control over their bodies and assassinate your targets. It is all about fulfilling the Facehugger fantasy.
RESPONSIBILITIES
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Blocked out, iterated, and set dressed in collaboration with environment artist on two levels.
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Conducted playtest sessions and adapted to feedback.
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As a product owner, responsible for the backlog, prioritizing tasks, and planning sprints.
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Communicating the vision to the composer, juries, and other outside parties.
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Scripted the possession core mechanic of the game as well as movement, camera system, and objective trackers.
LEVEL DESIGN & PROJECT GOALS
Levels that tell a story
I wanted to create levels that don't rely on words to tell a story.
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Levels that empower the player
II wanted my levels to fulfill the fantasy of being a fragile but deadly predator wrecking havoc.
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Thoughtful project management
I wanted to evolve as a product owner by committing to agile project management and putting effort into creating a supportive team environment.
Game Loop
Find a safe area
Observe and plan a route.
Sneak past guards
Possess a guard to remain unnoticed.
Game Loop
Find a safe area
Observe and plan a route.
Sneak past guards
Possess a guard to remain unnoticed.
Core Mechanics
The possession mechanic is at the heart of the game. I scripted it while Alexander Johansson was responsible for A.I behavior.
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Player Objective
At the start of each level, the camera focuses on the target that the player needs to assassinate, and then pans over the level, ending on the players position. Each level follows this formula.
Learn By Experimenting
I started my process by playing around with the prototyped mechanics, understanding our game and how to work with space and metrics. The levels below are rapid prototypes I did as a way to make misstakes, learn, and later apply that to my final levels.
Step 1 - Tutorial prototype
I started by creating a tutorial level since I wanted a proof of concept to see if players understand our mechanics. As you can see, I ended up making very large corridors with too much empty space. Learning this led me to make more consice levels later.
Level - "Lights Out"
The parasite has reached the nightlife area of the spaceship. This is where the guards go when they need a well-deserved break from their extensive research. Sabotage fuse boxes to turn off the lights, hide in the dark, and assassinate the DJ when he least expects it. It's time to crash the party.
I wanted the player to feel like they are infiltrating the enemy when they are vulnerable and relaxed. Through this, I hope to maximize the predator infiltration fantasy.
Player Experience
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The light switch
The player starts in the vent shaft. They quickly see the first fuse box in the game. If sabotaged, it turns the room beside you dark. I place ventilation shafts around rooms, so it is in the players' camera view. Players are given time and visual info to plan their next move while enhancing the stealth predator fantasy.
When starting on a level, I like to define the beats to make sure the level stays dynamic. It can be a new ability, a piece of the story, or a specific feel I want to evoke. Once the beat is defined, I focus my design efforts around it, which is very helpful in my process.
Beats
Process & Iterations
Working with Bubble Diagrams
I got inspired by a GDC-talk to do a less defined level sketch with circles representing how the player moves and the main attribute of the room. This way, the focus is shifted more towards how the player traverses and interacts with the space. After that, I did the more clearly defined top downs we see to the right, based on it.
This level went through many iterations. The changes could be small as changing the position of obstacles, or bigger ones as removing entire rooms. Below i show the process of how the level came to be and the most impactful changes that were made.
Killing darlings for flow
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A specific issue I had was the placement of the DJ booth. This was a major beat in the level. However, many avoided that path.
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Meanwhile, I was struggling with pacing. Players seemed to run out of steam in the final room.
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My solution was to cut the final room and make the DJ the target instead. This solved my two issues and made the experience tighter.
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Rooms where originally interlinked by vents that the enemy can't access. This made the space feel illogical.
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In the end result, the rooms are connected with corridors that guards can access, and the vents surround the rooms instead. It enhanced the fantasy and gave players more options on how to approach rooms.
The original blockout differs mostly in layout and scale from the end product.
Creating believable space
Managing traversal
with negative space
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An efficient way to make the player traverse in the desired way was to see the amount of negative space left by enemy view cones.
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Since players will be avoiding those, it is the remaining space that the player will want to stick to.
Guiding with warm light
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We use warm colors to indicate areas where the player can feel safe.
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In rooms where you can turn off the lights, I placed floor lights close to obstacles. These guide the player through the room and gives a place to hide if a guard walks by.
Guiding with sound
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With a top-down view, sound proved to be an efficient way of guiding the player, since it gives information before it is displayed on the screen.
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Players can hear guards or fuse boxes in the near vicinity, as well as get an understanding of the next room before they arrive.
BIG THANKS TO TEAM MEMBERS:
Jonas Holmlund, Alexander Johansson, Ben Lilieström, Rebecka Näsberg, Isaac Olander