Sunken Heart is a 3rd-person survival horror level that takes inspiration from Alan Wake & and Resident Evil 4. The level looks to create a horror atmosphere while being heavily influenced by narrative.
Year: 2023 | Genre: 3rd-person Survival Horror | Platform: PC
Sunken Heart
Full Playthrough
Introduction
This level is inspired by Alan Wake 2 & and Resident Evil 4. I really wanted to create a level where the main focus was showcasing the narrative and establishing proper pacing.
Working together with a small team with a 5-week deadline we were able to create a fully playable level. That looks to combine narrative, combat, and level design together to create this worthwhile experience.
Tools Utilized
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Unreal Engine 5
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Figma
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Trello
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Perforce
Team Size: 3
Felipe Brito de Castro - Combat Designer
Jaleel Willis - Jr Combat Designer
Kyle Robinson ( Myself ) - Level Designer
Production timeline [5 weeks]
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1 week of pre-production
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3 weeks of development
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1 week of polish
Pre Production
Throughout the preproduction process, I made sure to lay out the major beats of the project early on. Establishing a flow for the game and identifying exactly what objectives the game would have.
I focused heavily on gathering reference images that would fit the tone and realism I wanted to represent with the level design.
I focused on gathering 3 kinds of reference photos.
1. Concept art
2. Real world pictures
3. In-game pictures from the inspiration titles.
Level Layout
To make sure that I was able to fit all of the gameplay and objectives within the game I focused on creating simple topdowns throughout the level design process. Starting with my paper designs and moving to digital layouts later on made the block out process faster and allowed for me to prioritize faster iteration.
Paper Design
Digital Layout
Blockout Process
By utilizing Unreal Engines Modeling Tool I was able to create highly detailed blockouts that fit the function of the spaces I wanted without wasting any time.
Using the modeling tool I created the docks for the level by hand. This allowed me the flexibility to make changes to the Golden Path for the project really quickly.
I also created a kitbash set of objects that I knew I would need to place throughout the level. Doing this I was able to increase my workflow efficiency and the time necessary for the blockouts.
Level Flow
1. Intro on boat
2. First Memory
3.Combat - First Shadow
4. Arrive At docks
5. Second Memory
6. Combat Secon Shadow
7. Third Memory
8. Combat Ranged Enemy
9. Bridge Breaking
10. Fourth Memory
11. Light Puzzle
12. Hanged Tree
13. Combat 3 Waves
14 . Combat Last Fight
15. Vista of Cottage
14. Travel Through Swamp
15. Arrive at Witch's house
16. Final Memory
17. Inside the witch's house
18 . Final Boss
Level Design Techniques
Composition was very important to me throughout this entire process. Properly framing scenes allowed for me to add life to the space and influence the players behavior.
Utilizing guiding principles like leading lines, breadcrumbs, light, and movement was crucial to assisting the player throughout the level. Passive ways to familiarize the player with the space and provide insight into the way forward.
While trying to implement so many different aspects into the level it was crucial to keep in mind the level pacing and control how often new things were being introduced to the player so the game did not feel overwhelming or slow.
Level Scripting
The Universal Trigger System ( UTS ) is a modular overlap trigger where the designer could select from a list what type of event they wanted to trigger within the world. This drastically improved iteration time and allowed for easy iteration.
Types of triggers:
Sound, UI, Level Events, Audio, Cutscene, Combat, Manlte, Vault, Area Title, Checkpoints, and the ability to trigger multiple at a time.
Creating level interactions that talked to one of the central mechanics in the game allowed for an interactive experience.
Vines that burned away after being hit with the flashlight ability.
While also serving as gates that can be triggered from solving the puzzle or completing combat.
Memories were crucial to progressing the narrative of the level. Allowing the player to view a frozen frame of a narrative event that took place.
On Overlap - Transitioning the player to a different level that after a time period returned them back automatically to their last location.
Spirits served to guide the player through the level. They can be triggered with the UTS. They can be stationary or move to a set location to draw the player's attention.
The Shrine puzzle was a composition puzzle implemented to add a little cognitive challenge for the player. Having them find and light all three of the shrines in order to unlock the way forward.
Throughout the level, there are various hanging bodies that display several different animations. This is a singular mesh that is run through a finite state machine, designers can select which animation they would like to play based on the body part. [ Neck, Body, Feet ]
Pickups were created with modularity and made easy to place. A modular script was created to support all types of pickups within the level.
Placing pickups throughout the level allowed for fast balancing to sections of the level based on the resources available.
Placing and setting up enemy encounters was easy to do by leveraging the ETS and combat managers created to organize the encounters.
Making sure that the encounters and enemy-type introduced were properly paced was challenging and the pacing went through multiple iterations.
Final Thoughts
Sunken Heart served as a perfect testing bed for me to push myself to explore the quality of the level of experiences I can create. I have never created a level that was heavily bound by narrative and it has halted me from creating solid campaign experiences.
My major focus in this project was efficiency and working with the constraints. Creating tools like the Universal Trigger System, and creating the modular level events to utilize throughout the process was crucial to tackling this goal. I really wanted the level to be created with the constraint of narrative in mind. Creating scripted-level events like the memories and the dialogue triggers allowed me to showcase primary and secondary parts of the narrative.
I have really learned a lot during this project. I was able to create a quality narrative-driven experience and structure a level around those constraints. Thank you for reading.