DOWNWARD SPEAR
PROJECT INTRODUCTION
Downward Spear is a single player isometric tactical action game with stealth and horror elements. The ice caps have melted causing flooding of most coastal land, and released ancient viruses that consume their hosts.
RESPONSIBILITES
- Designing and building engaging, Tactical Isometric environments using Unity
- Creating Stealth– and Survival-focused encounters with cover, flanking, and exploration
- Using Modular Assets and tile-based layouts for Replayable, immersive spaces
- Collaborating with the design team and game director to ensure pacing and player flow
- Testing and Refining key progression paths and moment-to-moment gameplay
PROJECT DETAILS
- Unity
- Total Team of 6
- Role: Level Designer
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PureRef Environment References:
- Before I started any production on Bavarian Borough, I immediately got to work in finding Environment References using PureRef. This allowed me to research and review a German-Village inspired themed environment and town that I was going to come up with to design an environment with. I found a town in Georgia called Helen, who celebrates and is inspired by German Village Culture and it was an amazing place to research and learn about for this project!
Level Flow Map
- On Christmas, I was gifted a large whiteboard to write Notes and Ideas on! When Fortnite announced their 5v5 Tactical Shooter Game Mode, I immediately starting writing down notes, doing small sketches of flow maps, questions and confirmations about the Game Mode and it’s mechanics. Writing down my ideas and inspirations and notes about the flow of the level, and all my ideas entirely helped me a ton for this project.
- I got to write down a lot of ideas, the map’s Flow graph, details about the game mode, and even played a ton of Ballistic to get a solid idea of what to design and work with for Bavarian Borough!
2D Prototype
- Now to get Production Started, I had to graybox the pathing and flow of my level starting with some basic graybox platforms. This gave me an idea of scale, where to position the buildings on the side, and overall firing angles early on so I can balance them according to potentially crazy sight lines from players. It gave me enough room and space for motivation in what I wanted in the large gaps of the terrain for a building type. It allowed me to place specific stores, specific markets, specific house homes, and even workshops.
Environment Design
- When designing Bavarian, it was important to design comfortable and Tactical Sight Lines for both the attacking and defensive teams. There had to be opportunities to use special equipment such as grenades to coat sight lines in smoke, or to have a choke point to hold from the opposing team.
- There’s a mix of sight lines for Distance for different types of guns. I wanted to make sure there were enough sight lines for different play styles, for close, mid, and long range encounters.
Rifts / Teleporters In Tactical Team Shooters:
- Inspired by Valorant, they took a risk in adding Teleporters in Valorant into their competitive Tactical Team Shooter. With Bavarian Borough, I wanted to design and elaborate on this idea to offer more Precise and Strategy for players to bait going to sites.
- The teleporters in daily playtests were being used Strategically and used in variety to exit sites, and to go into flank positions quickly. Each teleporter in the map goes to Mid, and has a loud sound efffect n design to let other players know that someone teleported, teammate or enemy.
Level Art Execution:
- With a mix of Grayboxing & Level Art, it was time to get to work in creating all the awesome details to get ready to setup for Set Dressing & The background Environment! This is the process where I add all the buildings that are unique to player callouts, player strategies, and general player pathing! This part of the process was going to be the longest process into getting the level done and finalized and it was something that I was doing for about 2 months!
- After placing a bunch of art assets from Fortnite, there had to be Optimizations made to lower the memory limit for all users to be able to play on Bavarian Borough! I went through and cleaned any unnecessary visual additions so that the players didn’t get distracted by the beauty of the level and focused a little more on gameplay!
Downward Spear Flow Maps
