Game overview
Game
You wake up at the bar of a disco with a horrible hangover and no recollection as to what happened. In order to find out what happened, you go on a surreal journey where dreams and reality meet as you explore the seemingly endless and evolving disco in order to regain your memory.
Project
This was an 8-week university project. In a team combined with designers, artist and programmers. We had to create a game based on a theme and genre.
My contribution
-
Level design for the bar
-
Feature 'painting frame' teleportation effect
-
Rotating stairs effect
Title: Relapse
Role: Technical / level designer
Team size: 13 people
Duration: 8 weeks
Year: 2021
Audio visualizer
Overview
I designed and developed the audio visualizer feature for a game, which was particularly useful during the disco level where music played a crucial role. The feature made the music more prominent by creating post-processing effects and objects to move in response to the frequency of the music.
Design intention
The story of the disco is to show the player getting more drunk as they progress through the level. By syncing the visuals with the music, it creates a more cohesive and dynamic experience for the player. The level get's more objects moving with the frequency of the music as the player finds more drinks in the level. The use of this feature combines the narrative with the environment.
For this feature I designed and developed
-
A function that gets the frequency data from the music
-
Applying the stored data to the scale and positioning of objects
Disco Level design
Overview
One of my biggest contributions to this project was the level design done in the disco level.
Design intentions
As a player, I want to experience discovery, sensation and negativism. The player plays through a level with distorted disco themed scenes. Combined with the narrative, it should show the player the concept of Hiding sadness, trying to distract yourself.
For this level I designed and developed
-
Designing and setting up systems used for the level
-
Level lay-out and story telling
Level lay-out and story telling
In order to create the desired experience for the level, I found it helpful to break down the scenes and keep track of every detail. This involved carefully noting the interactions and output of the game, as well as evaluating the experience of each individual component.
Video of the level in-game
A scene breakdown using an isomatric view from the game to show the players intended path
An earlier flowchart breakdown of a scene
The interactive story-telling experience was made enjoyable in large part because of the "rule-breaking events". These are events that differ from the established rules of the game and catch the player off guard, adding an element of surprise and intrigue to the story. It was important to place these events strategically, allowing the player to first learn the game's rules before introducing the rule-breaking events. Additionally, the frequency of these events had to be carefully managed to avoid overwhelming the player. To track the game's balance, I kept a record of all such events and their intended impact on the player's experience.
UI / UX design
Overview
I contributed to the UI / UX by designing and developing the main- and sub menu's.
For the UI I designed and developed
-
Visual design; Working together with an artist to implement the 2D art. designed and developed the system for the moving background layers, button selection and transitions.
-
Navigation lay-out
-
General functionality; working together with a programmer to implement the saving and loading of the option menu.
Additional features
Painting frame teleportation
I designed and developed a feature that spawns a rendered picture of the current vision onto a plane and places this exactly at the distance so it fit's within the frame, making it look like the scene sudddenly changed and dropping the previous scene into a 2d image.
Rotating stairs effect
Rotating part of the scene based on the distance of a specific point while the player is on the stairs, creating an effect like the gravity is changing.
Visibility change when out of screen
An effect that toggles the visibility of an object when it's out of frame. This was designed as an effect to confuse the player's expectation.