Davis Bakker
-Level Designer-
Little Robo
Programs:
Unreal 4
Maya
Substance Painter
Design team: 2 level designers
9 members
My Work: Modeling, Story design, Level design, Leadership role, mission design
Concept
This game is a 2D side scroller based around trying to get a little robot creature through a dangerous facility in order to get the parts to make himself a friend. This was done through a clever game mechanic of switching between the main robot character and an adhesive ball character each with their own abilities to progress in the level.
We wanted to create a game that was a puzzle platformer. The setting was intended to look scary with larger than life environment assets giving the player a cog-in-the-machine feel. We wanted to create dual branching pathways that would optimize the key abilities of both the "robot" and "core"characters with both eventually being able to reach the end of the level together and progress.
Level Overview
All interior and structural assets were created by me
Limitations: This was a 48hr competition with the open ended theme of waves. There were a total of 7 people in this group, 2 members left the group before the end of the competition, 1 of the remaining members did little to no work. We ran into issues with the turret breaking on seeing a target that was later set to a single directional auto fire turret. The ball character kept moving into the background when impacting rounded objects due to the 3 dimensional nature of an unreal scene leading to a lot of topography needing correction to stop this from happening. Ended up scraping more than half of the assets I designed for the later parts of the level due to time constraints.
What I learned: Constant communication in between the different facets of a group is necessary for the Level Design process to ensure that everyone is working towards the same goal. The importance of mock outs benefit the team by identifying goals and issues from which the distribution of tasks becomes easier and more distinct. With enough tenacity, drive and direction, even an understaffed team can bring about results that can dwarf larger, less cohesive groups.
Gameplay Stills
Front Entryway
Structure assets created by me
First Obstacle
Structure assets and minor lighting done by me