Light Reforged

Level Designer

Overview:

Light Reforged is a 3rd person, hack n' slash, narrative adventure, where players explore a Norse-mythos world with steampunk aesthetics.

Team size: 15

Development time: October 2023 - April 2024

Engine: UE5

Contributions:

Top Down Concepts
Whiteboxing
Encounter Design
Player Comabt Mechanics
Cinematics
Documentation

Design Goals:

Explore the history of the world through environmental storytelling.
Make challenging enemy encounters
Find the balance for camera position to showcase the world and be in the optimal position for combat encounters

level showcase

Camera Spline Design

Say Cheese! Oh the camera is too far and you can't see my smile? Trust me I'm smiling!

In Light Reforged we utilized a spline camera system, which helped create dynamic camera work while the player navigated the environment. This system did come with some constraints that influenced how I approached levels, these were three key rules that helped guide how I designed player paths:

Avoid create overlapping paths that are too close to each other
Avoid having the player walk directly under the camera splines position
The player character shouldn't be too small in combat encounters

While these were rules, as the creator of them, I knew when and where to break them.

Vanaheim Forest Design Overview

Theme: Corrupted Forest

Design Goal: Introduce players to three different enemy types while establishing narrative

Guiding players:

Leading lines are marked in red. These lines were established early in the blockout phase to guide the player along the critical path, without having direct instructions on where to go.

Vanaheim Forest Final vs Whitebox

Blockout to current

Combat & Scenic Zones

Utilizing the spline camera we made sure to have distinct combat and scenic zones.

Combat zones progressively increase in difficulty as players traverse up the tree.
Scenic zones allow for a break from combat and showcases the environment.
Built a rhythm for the player, scenic zones acted as a reward and motivator for progression.

Asgard Arena

Theme: Battle Coliseum

Design Goal: Challenge players to a boss rush gauntlet of three unique bosses back to back.

Staging a show

For this level I blocked out a basic arena with a dungeon area below. In the center of the arena is an elevator lift. Throughout playtesting we found that the area was too large and scaled it down. This created the right amount of tension in combat.

Lighting For Guidance

Open doorway with lit area guide the way forward, a UI prompt displays confirming that players want to progressing to the next area.
The particle effects on the left show the upgrade station.

Svartlfheim City

Theme: Water front district with giant Robot

Goal: Players unlock a door through non-linear exploration of the level.

Designing for Exploration:

We wanted to explore non-linear exploration to give players the opportunity to discover the world.

From the concept stage I pitched a city built around a mecha body. The head being at the center of the city.

Two major changes to the level was the right buildings getting cut to help shrink the map as it was too large. The second was an aesthetic change from the blockout to make the left robot hand grab the building rather than face upwards.

Svartlfheim City Final vs Whitebox

Svart Blockout