Anarchy Park
After college I was given the opportunity to work under one of my previous teammates for a new project he was designing. His vision was a top down, 3D bullet hell themed around an amusement park. I joined the project a few months in as the level designer for the Overworld and worked closely with the lead designer to create a space for players to explore in between the difficult boss battles. This level went through the most iterations of any i had created before, but it created an end result that we could feel proud to release to a public audience
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Game Trailer
Overworld
Moodboards
Following the theme our lead designer had decided on, I referenced many real life amusement park maps for our overworld. The most challenging part of designing this level was keeping the feeling of exploring the complex layout of an amusement park, while keeping the level in scope for our game.
Level Map
There were a few different versions of the map for the overworld since after some initial designs and implementations I realized how much smaller the scale needed to be for the scope of this game. Aside from re-scaling, the sketches for the level also include a planned area that we had to cut from the final version of the game since we decided we would not have enough time or resources to finish developing it. This meant cutting a whole boss and the corresponding area of the overworld, but ultimately it let us create a smaller, but better quality final product.
First Overworld Design
Updated Overworld Design
Blockmesh
The blockout for this level went through many iterations before its final version. Some of these iterations included going back to making a new map to better fit the scale of the game, but others were redesigns that happened solely in the engine so that I could make sure the final design was actually fun and engaging for the player. The area that went through the most changes was the lava area, but after a few tries of finding what
Original Island Scale
Final Island scale
Finishing Touches
Adding in the final assets to the overworld really made the level come together and it showed off all the hard work our team had put in over the past few months. At this point our artists were still working on many assets they had to finish for the boss fights, so I relied a lot on marketplace assets to finalize the overworld. This put less pressure on the artists and gave them a good starting point for the remaining level assets that we needed them to create.
Cinematics
After adding the final assets to the overworld our lead designer had the idea of adding cinematics to the starts of each gameplay area. Due to the top down nature of our game, a lot of the elements of the overworld would never be seen by the player, or at least they couldn’t be appreciated fully, so the cinematics were a way to showcase all the work I did, as well as give the players a preview to the new areas they will get to explore. In total there are 3 cinematics, each using a simple camera in a level sequencer that plays whenever the player enters a new area of the game.