Overview
Role: Game/Level Designer
Engine: Unity 5
Release: January 2016 on PC and was later ported to Xbox 1 and PS4
Defunct is a 3rd person adventure game with a focus on flow, speed and an engaging world. You are a broken robot that accidentally falls out of a giant cargo ship onto a post-human Earth, now inhabited by robots. You have to get back to your ship before it’s too late!
You do this with the movement mechanic: “Gravitize”. Using the Gravitize will make you heavy, if you press the gravitize button when in a slope and facing down you gain speed. If pressed when going up a hill you will immediately lose your speed.
Awards
Defunct won Swedish Game Awards: Game of the Year 2014 award. GGC Best 2nd year project and was nominated for Unity Awards 2014.
Responsibilities
We were a very small team so I had to do a lot of different things but I was primarily responsible for the game design, level design and level art of Defunct.
The maps I worked on were:
- Was responsible for initial layout and design on 8 of 11 levels:
Home, Lost, Over the Hills, Into the Woods, Dawn, Oasis, Rock Bottom, Crash Site - Did major design work on 9 of 11 levels:
Home, Lost, Over the Hills, Into the Woods, Valley, Dawn, Oasis, Rock Bottom, Crash Site - Did major level art on 8 of 11 levels:
Lost, Over the Hills, Into the Woods, Valley, Junkyard, Oasis, Rock Bottom, Crash Site
Level Design Examples
Here you can read breakdowns of some of the maps from the game.
Over the Hills
The 3rd level in the game. I was responsible for the initial layout and did major design work and major level art work on this level.
This level was meant as the first real fun, open, explorative section. Where players could both get a better feel for the world and explore the main movement mechanic of the game; the gravetize. Therefore it was very important to allow the player a lot of path choices and freedom.
I made sure that the player had a good overview of the level when you first started it, so you could orient yourself. The ship is clearly visible and the objective is to follow it. And most objects in the world somewhat steer your eyes towards the middle were you are supposed to go.
I wanted the player to feel that they had a lot of room to explore and choose alternative paths so I added a very eyecatching alternative path to the left, for the more exploring types of players. I also put a collectible there to have some kind of reward for exploring and completing the jump challenge.
Huge radiotowers were added to help steer the player in the right direction and to act as waypoints, because of the big up and down movement of the player it was easy to get lost if I didn’t have very big and visible “weenies”.
At the middle of the level I put an uphill stretch to reduce the speed a bit to improve the pace of the level and give the player a small break. I also made sure to give the players another overview of the second part of the level and a bunch of different paths to choose from.
The gameplay continues as before with a lot of hills and open area. And again, a lot of different small path choices for the player, which adds a really nice “real world” feeling, even though it is a fairly linear game. No major off-path exploration stuff here because I wanted to focus the player forward.
At the end of the level I give the players a big fun release of speeding down a slope towards a new unexplored area and the edge of a forest. The downhill makes the gameplay easier so you can focus on seeing the wood approaching and just enjoy the speed.
I also tried to use the negative space of the sky to really put emphasis on the woods and the new area where you are suppose to go.
Conclusion Analysis
Overall this level was very liked by players. It was really enjoyable to just ride around the hills with no pressure in a calm place. The level was so open so it was impossible to crash into things or die, so people could practice and enjoy the movement unhindered. The radio towers worked perfectly as well and no one ever became lost. People also really like to drive and explore all the different areas and see what was behind each hill.
I think I could have made the waterpark to the left much more visible to player, a lot of the time they didn’t see it. I think we should probably have had this as the second level instead of the third. Or maybe even the first level because it is so forgiving and is easier than the first two levels.
The lighting of the level I feel was made a bit too dark as well. It’s hard to discern objects against the fog and sky and/or used light sources a lot more to drive the player forward and highlight interesting spots.
In conclusion I think it was a pretty good level and it was one of the more liked levels in the game. But it was far from perfect.
Dawn
The 6th level in the game. I was responsible for the initial layout and did major design work on this level. The level was build in such a way that if you played it twice but chose different paths it would be like playing two completely different levels. So it is essentially two or three level combined into one and you can mix and match your path choices as a player.
This level is the first introduction to the wasteland theme and to the enerjuice (you pick them up, a meter fills, you can use a boost that drains the meter and gives you speed). This level was made very straight; I wanted the player to enjoy the speed and feel super-awesome and have fun with the new enerjuice mechanic. So I didn’t want to introduce too many different difficult paths and options, and I wanted it to be super clear where you were supposed to go. So the level is basically a long road forward with a bunch of small alternative paths on the sides. The main challenges are keeping a good speed, avoiding obstacles and clearing big jumps.
It starts off a bit slow and introduces the ship again. To keep reminding you about the narrative and the overall game objective. You can also choose two completely different paths. Providing the player with some choice, making the world not feel as claustrophobic and it also helps with replayability of the game. Since I wanted to have the game very speedrunning friendly it also adds to the challenge of finding the fastest route.
Eventually the two paths connect and the player gets his first can of enerjuice. I tried to design the level straight to avoid confusing the player on where to go. I just want them to enjoy the speed.
A jump comes up which is easy to get over with the help of enerjuice! And some different options on how you want to get over it. I continued putting in these big jump challenges throughout the level so you would have to make use of the enerjuice to get speed. All the jumps had at least 2 ways to get over, some with a regular jump or zip-lines and other jumps with bouncing platforms to create som variety.
Once you have cleared the first big jump you have some time to get ready for the next jump. But after the second jump there is a 3rd one short after so the intensity increases and the player needs to be on their toes.
In the last part you see a big uphill slope and a bunch of enerjuice puddles, which grants you both speed and enerjuice if you go through them. So the player needs to gain speed and enerjuice from the puddles to get up the ramp. There is no worry about failing here, I want the player to just feel the insane speed and prepare for the huge climactic jump.
Once you have cleared the huge ramp you do a big jump into the next level and the whole speed buildup finally releases with a quiet moment flying through the air into a huge open space that is the next level.
Conclusion Analysis
This level introduced the Enerjuice mechanic and players really enjoyed that. I think it was a very good choice to keep the level straight and flat because most players have a hard time controlling the character when going superfast from using the Enerjuice. As with “Over the Hills” players really enjoyed the different path choices we offered.
The jump challenges were very hard to read and players weren’t very well prepared for the jumps when they came sometimes. I think I should have made sure people came to a jump from a slope or a downward angle. To make sure they could see big holes in the ground long before they had to jump over them.
I could have removed some more obstacles as well to allow for better control when going high speeds. And also made all the ramps wider so it was easier to hit them. Generally making things slightly more broad.
In conclusion I think this level did a decent job in introducing the Enerjuice and let players go superfast without too much difficulty. But it was a bit hard to read and needed a bit too much precision in movement.
Robert Graff 