Ward of Perdition- Level Design

This level was made in the span of three weeks. The first week consisted of putting together a LDD in order to get a grasp of what my level would entail, and the planned layout of the level. The second week I put together the layout of the level in a block mesh and tested to make sure everything felt right. The final week I added in mechanics to go with my level and put the finishing touches on the block mesh.

Post Mortem:
What Went Right:

[ Optional Objectives] - Making all of my optional objectives and the blueprints that came with them was easy to achieve and worked well with the overall design of the level.

[ Mechanics ] - Each of the mechanics I made for this level we're easy to implement and achieve. The overall turn out of these mechanics fit the original vision of the level, and minimal changes had to be made to update the mechanics.

[ UI ] - The overall user interface I feel did an excellent job of feeding the player information about their health, and when mechanics were available to be used. The ending UI also did its job of showing players what objectives they did or did not complete.

[ Theme ] - I feel that the theme of the level was conveyed well inside the building and it was easy to tell that the darkness and messy environment were thematic choices.

[ Paths ] - I feel that in this level the paths worked well as they we're realistic, and weaved together at every floor of the building. The player was almost always capable of using multiple ways to scale up and down the building.


What Went Wrong:

[ Overall Design ] - In the designing phase I under estimated the amount of space I would be allowed to work with while making this level. This led to me changing the overall interior design of the hospital and wasting a lot of time trying out different designs.

[ Cross Mechanic ] - With the cross mechanic I struggled to get the item durability to actually change. I fixed this issue by changing the design so the player was always able to use the cross as long as it was not on its 15 second cool down.

[ Mechanic Explanation ] - Mechanics were not explained well enough to be usable by the players, and many players did not understand how, when, or why these mechanics should be used. The level is also completable without using any of the mechanics, and this only further detracts from their usability.

[ Lighting ] - While the lighting in some areas worked to create the horror atmosphere I was looking for, in other areas it was often too dark for players to see and this lead to player frustration.

[ Player Orientation ] - Players we're often left confused as to where they were in the hospital and struggled to understand they layout even during their second or third playthrough. In hindsight markers for each floor of the hospital could have mitigated this confusion as well as if the area was better lit.