Max Mustard
KEY INFO
Platform: VR
Genre: Third-person platformer
Studio: Toast Interactive
Timeframe: 2020-2022 (released 2024)
Tools: Unity, Fork(Git), Asana
My role: Game Designer, QA, level design
About the project and my role in it
As pre-production started on this project, I transitioned from community management to game design, working on level prototypes and pre-production game design work. As production advanced, I also handled QA and some production work, along with coordinating user testing and feeding information back to the wider team.
The approach to building levels for this game was such that we brainstormed a wide variety of level theme ideas based on unique mechanics, sketching them out on paper and then building blockouts in Unity to validate the idea. These were also user tested in the early stages, allowing us to identify early which concepts were stronger than others and moving forward with them.
In the final game, there are several levels that I was involved with, either as the original creator of the level concept, or having inherited a concept from another designer on the team to do the blockout of. As I moved on from the team in April 2022, these levels were then handed off to other level designers and artists to be finalised.
Challenges AND OPpoRTUNITIES OF LEVEL DESIGN IN VR
Level design is both art and science in normal, flat screen games: VR level design is a whole other beast!
We encountered many challenges resulting from working in VR in third person, including:
player camera movement - movement speed, distance from the character, camera height in relation to both character and environment. These all contributed to having to very carefully manage the player’s perspective in order to enable smooth interaction with the game world
fixed camera movement - in this title, the player can only move forward through a predetermined corridor (while the third person character can be moved anywhere). This meant we had to be extra careful about how puzzles and platforming are presented so that the player doesn’t need to backtrack. It also meant that we had to be extra creative about enabling an explorative feeling and using clever environmental design to make levels feel less straight up and down.
player motion sickness - well known within VR, we had to undertake extra testing early on to verify some of our ideas against what’s actually comfortable for players
platform technical capacity - building for the Oculus Quest 2 presented many technical challenges that the team is still working on. For the level designers, this created a need to have one or two moments per level in which the upcoming geometry is completely occluded from the player (to reduce render distance requirements) and through some mechanism, for example some clouds parting, the way forward becomes visible
We also had some incredible opportunities to push the boundaries of what kind of feelings we can impart on the player given the VR medium:
Having the ability to make the player really feel part of the game world using environment design techniques
Bringing level elements close up to the player for big “wow!” moments
Using contrast such as indoor and outdoor, near and far in new ways
Creating opportunities for the player to do things that generally aren’t possible in flat screen games, like flying, moving up and down on an elevator, and interacting directly with the environment to progress the gameplay