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Down with the Degalons

KEY FACTS

Main Role: Lead Designer & Level Designer
Genre: Action Adventure focused on exploration with puzzle elements
Engine: Unity
Team Size: 9
Duration: 9 weeks
Target Group: Explorers, Sci-fi enthusiasts 
Reference Games: No Man's Sky, Portal 2, Half-Life

TRAILER
HIGHLIGHTS OF WHAT I WORKED ON
OVERVIEW

Level Design / Worldbuilding / Puzzle Design

In Down with the Degalons you’re dropped down in the middle of a escalating conflict known as the semiconductor war. You play as Himin Austu that’s been sent in secret to the north pole of the planet Pintagli to sabotage for the rivalry Clan Degalon.
The game is a first person action adventure with puzzle elements and a Sci-fi setting. You will need to explore the environment to find and harvesting resources to upgrade your suit. The upgrades is needed to be able to complete your secret mission and you will need to decide in the end which side you’re on in this war.

LEVEL DESIGN / WORLDBUILDING

Worldbuilding_over_time.gif

Early level design

Design and sculpting over time

Level Overview

Mood board for world building

Concept art for worldbuilding

Player Guidance​

The planet is ice cold and the atmosphere is quite dark and foggy. In order to guide the player around and make it easy to spot point of interest, I used a few techniques to guide the player in the level. 

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  • Use of colors
    • Red for enemy buildings
    • Blue neutral or friendly buildings
    • We use yellow for crystals that you collect for your upgrades. Because they’re essential for the game we really wanted to use a colour that’s easy to spot from a distance
    • Green is for key objects like the water filters and exits of the puzzles
  • Frozen lake
    • Using the distinct dark color of the lake from the white snow to give a clear difference in the environment to guide the player
  • Pipes
    • Pipes are connected throughout the level that leads the way towards the main enemy base
main_base.gif
player_guidance.gif
pipes guidance.png
Screenshot 2022-05-19 at 12.50_edited.jp
Screenshot 2022-05-19 at 18.22_edited.jp
Screenshot 2022-05-19 at 18.27_edited.jp
enemy-base.gif
Final version of the game

PUZZLE DESIGN

  • Built around our two mechanics

    • Shrinking​

    • Attraction Glove (like a gravity gun in Half-Life or Portal 2)

  • Starts out in similar fashion

    1. ​Find the entrance​

    2. Shrink and get inside the vent

    3. Proceed to move the crates to get through to the other side

 

We wanted to build puzzles with the same concepts again and again in a different way to give the player a sense of progression and create that nice feeling you get when becoming better at something.

Early design thinking of puzzles using the attraction glove
Prototyping final puzzle design
One of the final puzzle design in game 
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