What comes after the Boss is more important I am finally getting towards the end of the the God of War(2018) inspired level. After spending most of the level learning about the Witch, it was finally time for the player to face her. For this I wanted a unique arena to fight the boss in. For the boss fight I wanted to create a unique arena that felt different from the spaces the player had explored previously. I am also a big Lord of the Rings fan, so I took some inspiration fr

Intensifying narrative before boss fight using Level Design and Cutscenes With this area sitting directly before the boss fight of this level, I wanted to shift the tone and create a sense of uneasiness in the player, potentially even frighten them a little. The main boss of this area is a Witch that is raising the dead so after progressing through the majority of the level, meeting her and learning about her previously I wanted this to be a place where she is now actively ac

The Pushable block puzzle and bringing together all three pillars. I am back to blocking out the main path of the level, and this next area is where I wanted to start bringing everything together. The goal was to create a space that houses all three of God of War's pillars: Narrative, Exploration and Combat. As the player progresses, I use another level design technique, the Bait and Switch. The player approaches another lift, and as they have used one before they naturally e

Side area and asking for feedback. I've had a busy week enjoying the Edinburgh Fringe, so I didn't have as much time as I hoped to continue working on the level. With the time I did have, I wanted to accomplish two things: bring some of the mechanics I'd created into the existing level and create a small side area. I mentioned in a previous post about wanting to add a Three Rune Chest to this area so now that I have created the blueprint I decided to add it in. I also added i

Keeping it simple when making level mechanics in Blueprints. I stepped away from blocking out briefly to create some simple interactions and mechanics using UE5 blueprints. At this point in the project I wanted to start building some reusable mechanics that I could bring into both the current level and future areas. Here I want to shout out my fellow contributors on this project, Nathan Robinson and Kienan Southern. They have done a lot of great work on the player character,

The third area, adding complexity to the level and why I chose to narrow a simple vault. For this post I am moving onto the next area of the level. The goal of this area is to develop on what the player had learned in the previous encounter, increasing combat complexity while continuing to develop the narrative and exploration of the environment, hammering home the three core pillars of God of War. This area was a lot of fun for me because it is inspired from a place very clo

The second area, initial combat scenario and why I added a huge blue cube. Here I want to talk about the blockout of the next area, the ruins. Which houses the first combat scenario of the level, giving the player more story about the area as a whole. I will also talk about some minor iterations to improve the overall level. Firstly a very simple yet I believe important addition to the level I added was my end point. One challenge I was facing was not having a clear destinati

Adding narrative and iterating on first area. For my second post I am going to talk about some simple iterations I made to the first area of my God of War (2018) inspired level. Firstly, a simple change I made was to seal off the edges of the map so the player can't just run anywhere. Looking at God of War when it outdoor areas they mostly do this by surrounding the playable space with large rocks and trees. Something that is very simple to do but it allows me to push the lev

I have been wanting to create a God of War (2018) inspired level for some time so myself and a couple of friends decided to set up a project and get working. I got busy and didn't work on it for a while. Recently, I was on a walk and I started thinking about what I could do with this project so I decided to note down in my notes a small level that would get me started. The keys were to get something simple down, get in the main reads first and not focus too much on anything c