BloodSpear
Details
Blood Spear
Level Design
Game Design
VFX
Genre : Third Person Action Adventure
Engine : Unreal Engine 4
Time : 8 months
Team : 7 (5 Designers + 2 Artists)
Platform : PC
Player : 1
Pitch :
The Blood Spear is awake, ready to carry out its vengeance on this mysterious world.
Throw and Impale a variety of foes and bosses, kill them and absorb their blood.
Shatter your spears on your targets to unleash great damage, or impale them with a powerful melee attack.
Use your dash to avoid damage, or to find a better position during a fight.
If you accidently die, find another body to possess.
We are all proud about our reviews
95% positive on 800+ (september 2021)
The Videos - Walkthrough
It's a walkthrough.
I hope you will enjoy watching it.
The Videos - Bridge Entrance - LD Evolution
Here you can watch a video of the Level Design evolution in the area Bridge Entrance
I worked on this Level Design on all aspect, Blocky, Integration, Iteration, Collisions and Encounter.
I designed the primary Level Design Object we can see in this video : The Eye Door, you can learn about it later on this page.
The Videos - Sanctuary - LD Evolution
Here is three other areas I created.
The Sanctuary Main Room, that player will enter and get back in later on, after fighting its way through the game.
The Corridor, a trapped area where the player will fall to a long stairs with an intense fight.
The Altar, a room full of enemies and praying cultists and object obstructing the player's path on the sideways.
My Contribution for the project
Mainly : Level Design
I created the blocky and was in charge of Level Design and Art Integration and Encounter of the following Areas :
-Bridge Entrance
-Bridge
-Sanctuary Main Room
-Sanctuary Corridor
-Sanctuary Altar
-Boss Room
I worked with the Art Team to create, for the player, the best levels he can toy with our 3C in.
That means working on :
- Pathing.
- Navigation.
- Collisions.
- What the player will see and when.
- Combat Encounters.
Other Tasks : Game Design
With the Design team we worked together to take decision on what our character can and cannot do.
I studied references for Character movement, action and camera :
- God of War (2018)
- Horizon : Zero Dawn
- Ghost of Tsushima
- Tomb Raider
- Darksouls 1 - 3
- Sekiro
Ohter Tasks 2 : VFX and HUD
Our Art team being small and having much to do, I did most of the VFX in the game, from the blood when impaling to the laser beam of the boss.
I never used Niagara before and learnt it for the project.
I worked on the HUD as well.
Level Design intentions
Our Art Team is small, 2 Artists full time with the help of 1 more for the Character and the Enemy.
That fact shaped our decision concerning the size of the game and the shape of the levels themselves.
We started with the goal to have at least 4 areas :
- Bridge Entrance.
- The Bridge.
- The Sanctuary.
- Boss Room.
rejected layout of the Levels
We went with the Level Direction brought by Erwan MAUPAS (see The Team section below).
One of the pillar of the game was the Elevation, we start below and we climb our way to the
top of the sanctuary.
Our 3C didn't allow for a fully vertical game.
We opted for a mix between navigations, stairs and gigantism.
Later in production we added more rooms in the Sanctuary, having more combat encounter and areas to explore.
In the sections to come, I will detail the evolution of each areas I mainly worked on.
But first you can take a look at our Level Design Document (a fraction of our Game Design Document), to see the work Erwan and I have been doing all this year.
Level Design Document
Game Design Document
Level Design Objetcs
I worked on some LDOs (Level Design Objects).
Our game not being puzzle driven, we didn't have a lot of LDOs.
The only one that was kept in its form in the game was the Eye Door and Eye Wall, attacking the player in range.
The Bridge & Entrance
The Bridge took almost half of the total production time to be Final.
I started with a simple design, to test the metrics, the time it takes from start to end.
At first a simple design, on wich I continued to work to improve its pathing and the overall navigation experience.
We honed the combat encounter over time and playtests to fit the system and the teaching needed, for this area serves as a tutorial for the player.
You can see a slideshow showing the global shape of the bridge over time, and one showing the look by the player.
Before
After
The Bridge saw many improvement like these (see image right here => ),
where we wanted to offer the player more time to navigate, enjoy the view our artists
worked on and feel the danger of potentiel encounter.
In this example I wanted to further break the linearity of the navigation with
two kinds of obstacle :
- a hole does not hide a threat, open the view, naturally shape the navigation
- an obstruction hide a threat, make the player want to see behind it before going past it
Later on we added other kind of obstacles, destructible, to slow down the player (for
a fight) and teach him of ranged enemies
Improvements
The Sanctuary
The Sanctuary was meant to be 1 room before the Boss Room.
We wanted to have more variety, more room for combats and our artists were good on their timing, meaning we could expand our Sanctuary rooms.
We added :
- The corridor
- The main room
- Broke corridor
- Altar room
- 3 Fight rooms
- The Cave
The vast majority of those rooms are short and meant for an exotic experience, some narration or an encounter.
We had many versions of the main room, the first I design was way smaller, in a bad, way and did not deliver the intent of gigantism.
So when the time came, I designed a room fit to be in a temple/sanctuary.
We worked together with the Art team, and especially Quentin LE GOFF, to dress the room keeping in mind the cost of too much details.
The Boss Room
The boss room was meant to be efficient, no real navigation here outside of combat.
The boss itself shaped the room, I worked closely with Louis Langlet (who was in charge of the boss, see The Team) to make a room that fits every patterns of the boss and the evolution of the Boss' Design.
The Team
We have a fairly small team, 7 as student in our group at ISART Digital Montréal (+ 1 artist), and benefiting the help of 2 Sound and Music Designers.
DESIGN
Louis LANGLET : Portfolio | Louis Langlet
Game Design + Visual Scripting (Boss)
Erwan MAUPAS : Portfolio | Erwan Maupas
Game Design + Level Design (High Level)
Irwin SEGARANE : Portfolio | Irwin Segarane
Game Design + Visual Scripting : 3C, AI, perf
Nils TRAUN : Portfolio | Nils Traun
Game Design + Visual Scripting (Death Feature, Save System)
ART
Quentin LE GOFF : ArtStation | Quentin Le Goff
3D Enviro/Props Artist
Thibaut REIMEL : ArtStation | Thibaut Reimel
3D Texture Artist,Tech Artist, Enviro/Props
With the help of
Antoine RAMPALY : ArtStation | Antoine Rampaly
3D Character Artist
SOUND & MUSIC
Nicolas Des Alliers : https://musicplayaudio.com/
Sound Designer
Maxime Jacquet : https://www.jacquetmaxime.com/
Music Designer