BLIND JUSTICE
Quest Design, Dialogue Designs & Level Greybox
As a part of an iRT3D Skills Bootcamp and then a contracted work for INFINITY27, I was tasked with designing a quest with branching dialogue options and an accompanying industry standard level greybox.
ABOUT THE DESIGN
PROJECT BRIEF
SAMSARA is a next-gen action-adventure RPG that fuses elements of Buddhism with souls-like gameplay — challenging players to meditate on their philosophy, life and death to help them find meaning through discourse, conflict and exploration.
MY CONTRIBUTIONS
- Designed and implemented a quest with a branching player-driven narrative
- Wrote branching options for the dialogue tree
- Sketched out a floor plan of the level and then iterated on it
- Created a polished greybox level with around 5+ minutes of gameplay
- Balanced loot and enemy encounters within my greybox
- Participated in stand-up meetings and gave feedback on peers' levels
- Pitched my level, quest, and dialogue to the team at INFINITY27
LEVEL DESIGN
I started by thinking about the level's overall theme, mood, and key interactions and how to best match them with the accompanying quest's narrative. This information along with creating a mood board of reference images helped me conceptualize the level's structure and aesthetics, ensuring they aligned with the game's broader artistic direction as well.
I then created a floor plan of the whole area along with marking any NPC interactions, enemy encounters, and the main critical path. This design has then been through multiple iterations to ensure the pacing was up to the required standards.
BOOTCAMP GREYBOX
Once I was satisfied with the level's layout, I started using the modelling tools within Unreal Engine 5 to create my level greybox out of simple shapes and placeholder models.
My focus was to use leading lines and lights to guide the players on the critical path, and also adding hidden areas and treasures to reward players for exploration.
Similarly to the previous designs, I iterated on the level until I was satisfied and the greybox met the requirements set by the design team.
FINAL GREYBOX
After I was contracted to come back to the project and iterate on my design, I used all the feedback that I received during the skills bootcamp to rework and expand the level.
The INFINITY27 team has also moved to a new version of UE5 and level prototyping tools that I was able to learn to use quickly and rework my greybox from the ground up, using the old version as a reference.
The new version of the level has been majorly streamlined to reduce confusion in terms of player navigation. It has also been expanded both in terms of scale and gameplay challenges. The new system additionally allowed for annotations to be made straight into the level which was very convenient for me and the level artists both.
