FarOutback

Far outback was a capstone project for my games design course at JMC Academy. The game is an isometric co-op action/adventure game featuring a gecko and toad. The toad is a tank who wields a hammer, the gecko is nimble but wields a crossbow. Both characters use their abilities with each other to perform interesting combinations and pass through waves of enemies.

My Role

The project was created with a team of 13. I was originally responsible for creating the level design of a beachside town, further down the timeline of the project I created the tutorial level, first level (beachside town) and a rockpool area. As well as a few 3D assets. My level designing role consisted of a lot of communication with the director and a lot of iteration to achieve the desired outcome. My artist role consisted of picking up outstanding tasks and communicating with the art director and art lead.

The Team

Check out the team on our itch.io page!

The Team

Level Design

As a level designer on this project, I was given a brief to work with, during the project the brief slightly changed due to new mechanics or a change in direction from a lead. My job was to come up with a design to support gameplay and adapt it whenever there was a change as well as set dress the entire level.

My Level Design Work

Tutorial

Problem

Learn: shooting, light attacks, heavy attack, slam and lever (Previous)

Players were not retaining the information from the tutorial which then created an unplanned level of difficulty later on in the game as players did not understand how the complex combat combos worked. This caused players to get frustrated.

My conclusion was that the tutorials pacing was too fast and that players were being fed controls rather than learning how to play the game.

Solution

Learn: Shooting and light attacks

In order to solve the problem I slowed down the pacing of the level. I also provided the player with some easy to defeat enemies after each explanation of a mechanic.

This slowed the rate at which things were introduced to the player and gave an area for the player to practice what they had just learnt reinforcing the mechanic to their memory.

The outcome was that players understood the combat and how each combo was meant to be used on enemies, this avoided frustrations of not knowing how to play in later levels.

1st iteration of tutorial

The tutorial was created after the first level. It was originally given to another level designer but was later scrapped and handed to me. The game's combat system is quite complex and fitting it into a short 5 - 10 min tutorial was challenging. I approached it by giving the players information on how they can perform certain moves and gave them an area to practice those moves.

This got the job done, but it meant that if the player rushed through the tutorial or missed something they would be quite confused later on. This heavily impacted areas where players learnt about combos as they required knowledge from previous sections to do a combo. To solve the problem I wanted to stop the player from progressing as this would ensure they learnt the mechanic before moving forward. However, I was not allowed to do this as the lead did not want to trap players in the tutorial.

2nd iteration of tutorial

Green / yellow: Mechanic Red: Practice

To solve the problem I first discussed with the lead, presenting my conclusion based on playtests and how the problem could be solved. I communicated my ideas and was granted the ability to extend the duration of the tutorial.

I then started by planning out on paper when each mechanic should be introduced and when there would need to be enemies or a task to reinforce the player's learning of that mechanic.

I then started blocking out these areas. To slow down the pace of the game (to allow the player time to process what they had just learnt) I added scenic areas after enemy encounters more focused on aesthetics. I used S-curves to do this in order to increase the duration of pathways without increasing the size of an area and ruining the composition of the level.

This design unlike my first iteration taught players how to play the game rather than teach them the controls. For example: when using the gas combo (massive area damage), I give the players a larger group of enemies, which explains to players that the combo is most effective in a situation like this. Prompting them to use it in future similar situations

This solved the problem and whilst showcasing at Pax a larger amount of players understood the game's combat and weren't confused / frustrated in more difficult levels.

Level 1 (Beachside Town)

Learnings and Improvement

As a team we learnt a lot. We learnt about the importance of dependencies and how a single person can affect the pipeline, we also learnt about the importance of an art direction and having the team be on the same page.

The town was the first level I worked on and the mistakes I made on this level helped me improve my designing skills and made the next 2 levels easier to create. This was the first time I had worked on an isometric project and my skills working in this camera angle greatly improved, from making sure not to block the player's view of characters and using angled paths to draw the player's attention. I also got faster at set dressing levels due to iteration and changes as well as a general improvement in running QA tests on my designs and the game, for bugs.

Problem

Player's were not opening this particular gate

Solution

I added a light to make the lever more visible, this fixed the problem by directing the player's attention.

Problem

The town area did not look like a town, it was quite empty since all the assets had to be outside of the play area in order to not interfere with the combat

Solution

I discussed this with the lead and proposed a slightly different experience where multiple objects were on the play area giving a more clustered feeling of a town, I then made all of the objects physics based so that players could hit them around and cause a mess.

This improved the aesthetics / feel of the town whilst adding a unique area of combat where things were flying around. which lead to a nice climactic kill room.

After a lot of iteration this was my final design. I decided to organise the gameplay between checkpoint interactions into loops. Inside these loops The player frequently died and so the checkpoint was necessary. If a player did not open a shortcut and died in the next loop they would have to complete the first loop again. This added more of a loss to death however, like in my previous design I showed players that there were shortcuts (locked doors next to checkpoints), which enabled players to open shortcuts in their first attempt or realise that they were meant to open shortcuts after dying. I also used elevation to compress the map and make shortcuts easier to implement. This also meant the players consistently move upwards when progressing which was useful when showing progression with an isometric camera.

Rockpool

The rockpool level doesn't contain much combat, it is an area heavily focused on aesthetics and is used as a build-up to the next level. I made the area much wider and open which prompts the player to go around and explore, looking for treasure chests and coming across a few enemies. This slows the pacing and gives the player a break before going back into heavier combat. This slowed gameplay is used to create a build-up intensifying the amount of barnacles until the player reaches the ship, an entrance covered in barnacles meant to look menacing and provide a climax for the next level.

Props

My main focus on the project was level design. However, when the team saw that the project was behind on assets I stepped in as a CG Artist and contributed to the game's art. I mostly modelled and sculpted props as well as implementing most of the entire team's 3D assets in engine.