
I was a Level Designer and World builder in the Sound Slide project. Since this project was made with only Game Designer and Game Programmer students, we adapted to the lack of Game Artists in order to make it. Challenges awaited me : as a Level Designer and as a World builder.
Level Designer : Music as Level
My mission as Level Designer was to create levels with specific music attributed to them. I also had to make the levels challenging or fun to navigate through, depending of the level type. With a tool made by our programmer, creating and iterating on Level Design wasn't hard and time consuming. The unexpected challenge lies in making the levels fun to navigate through, and later, comprehensible with the addition of graphic assets.
Since we played the levels over and over again, we had to use playtesters to see if levels were fun and/or at their designed level of challenge. That wasn't always the case. In order to give the player a nice experience, we remade levels/rebuilt some parts to make them as wanted.
World Builder : Graphist work for a Game Designer
As a World builder, but also a member of the team, my challenge was to adapt to fill needs in the production at different times. Since we didn't have any Graphist with us (we were forbidden to ask for one), we had to improvise. I started to learn a new software to help : Blender, I started producing some assets that we needed.
Producing assets was a bit new, but I learned more about the concept of readability, an important concept for Level Design. My role didn't shift definitively from Level Designer to World builder, it was like a back and forth. With it, when I reworked on levels (to change some or make new ones), I put more attention to the capacity of my work to be understood by the player.
What I learned from it
My Sound Slide experience enabled me to see the two sides of a level : the Level Design and the Level Art. I was challenged to make fun levels with a simple concept, but also very clear so as to not mislead the player. I was challenged to make comprehensible assets for the game. Overall, I'm happy to have seen and experienced another type of work that helps me understand Level Design better.
The Team
Producer & Sound Designer : Loïc Bourdrel
Game Designer & Main Artist : Erwann Depeauw
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