Building up my level

Environment art and level design 


Before I started working on my prototype I knew it would be important that I planned out my game level roughly so I could understand the layout and style would work together. I started off by roughly sketching out a few levels so I could get a idea of the size, landscape layout and where I was going to place sprites and objects throughout the level. I preferred to do this traditionally instead of doing it digitally or blocking it out in unity as I feel my ideas are stronger when it draw in a style I am used to doing. Two of the examples I came up with can be seen below in the first image.

Once I had planned out a simple level layout I could base my final design on, I did some image research into the environment I had envisioned for my design and created a mood board for inspiration. After looking over the images I had found, I began to sketch out dangerous objects that Light could come across and need to avoid in the environment. The story behind the planet is that as all of the plants in the forest are dying due to the lack of light they are receiving and this has caused them to become poisoned, rotten, or widely out of control. Examples of these can be seen in the second image below. If Light touches one of these objects, it acts a as instant kill. As well as this, the landscape has warped and changed due to Light and Dark being out of balance which can be seen with the floating platforms of earth scattered around the level.

After sketching out my level and environment designs I felt motivated to continue my work as I started drawing out a rough but complete level design which would allow me to work out the different shades of grey I wanted to use for each object. To be honest I was really struggling to get down my design ideas and concepts that I had been thinking about for this level and I knew I had to get them done before I started doing my prototype so I knuckled down now that I felt motivated and got down a design. The finished image can be seen below. I decided to stick with basic colours for my level design and didn't include any shading as I wanted to keep it simple to match the character concepts I had come up with and to be honest I think it gives it a nice effect. I also made sure that I included a few different elements that Light would encounter during exploring the level, for example the small orbs and a example of the wild throned vines. Below the first image, Is a image and a video example of what the level will look like once the player has had their 10 seconds of memory time and the environment fades to black.

After completing my level design I thought it would be a good idea the analyse each part of it to convey clearly what the player is supposed to do in each section and what will happen if they do something wrong. This visual guide is something that I could include in my GDD is needed and is also something to help me plan out other level designs if I get to that stage.