Johan Lundgren
Level Design
![A first person adventure. Escape from the sinking freight ship. The level was created for [***Steve Lee's Level Design Jam 9.***]{#FFD029} 3 weeks of work, part time.](assets/images/gallery01/e5ae8527.jpg?v=ef9ec494)
Genre
First person action platformer
Role
Level Design
Team size
10
Time
7 Weeks
Tools
Unreal Engine 5, Perforce, Miro, Jira, Figma
Concept
FLESHBOUND is a fast paced demon-slaying action platformer.
You traverse unique and dangerous environments by utilizing abilities like dash, wall-run and grapple.
Explore the environments vertically through launchpads and see the world from a different perspective through the gravity flippers. Slay vile demons all along the way.You play as Endo, a human incarcerated in Hell inside the fleshy walls of the Manifold, cocooned in place and slowly morphing into a demon. One day a parasite attaches itself to Endo and begins communicating with him, offering a chance to escape his prison.. Run!
Level Design
As the sole level designer on FLESHBOUND, I was responsible for crafting the game's environments and ensuring they supported the fast-paced gameplay, blending challenge and exploration.My main goal of the Level Design was to make sure that the levels would fit both the gameplay and the narrative beats and hopefully achive a sense of flow.Level Design Pillars:Flow: Through fast movement, clear mechanics and paths the player should feel a sense of flow.Excitement: Traversing the levels should feel fast and exciting.Mastery: Playing through the game multiple times, the player should feel the joy of increased mastery.Power: The player should feel their power increase from the introduction of new mechanics.Vertigo: The surroundings moving and time altering should give a sense of vertigo.
Process
Once we decided on making a platforming game I started researching similar games similar games for level design inspiration.
I found some great talks from the Neon White team and especially from the team behind Ghostrunner.
Some notes I took regarded linear levels, clear paths, creating small segments of the level (arenas).
I got inspired by Ghostrunners level structure, splitting the levels up in distinct parts. and having clear goals for the levels.Once we had the first gameplay mechanics somewhat nailed down, I started testing scale and getting measurements for platforms, wallrun-walls etc.
Getting the rough metrics down quickly made designing the levels much faster and simpler and the artist could get to work on environment assets quickly.
I then started making level layout sketches, again focusing on the mechanics first. The sketches were first made on paper but in order to keep the group updated I made versions in Figma and put it up on our Miro.In collaboration with the artists, I helped establish a color scheme. where yellow would guide the player’s path. I specifically requested yellow props to ensure a clear visual language that directs player navigation.The first level I made was the testing area, the "Gym" or "Gameplay garden" where we could test and tune mechanics and get a sense of how the game would look and play.
I then blocked out the levels one by one, saving the Tutorial and Boss levels for last. Tested and iterated upon the levels and eventually made the first artpass where I swapped out meshes.I designed the levels as a sequence of mechanics/moves first and geometry and environment second, effectively creating obstacle courses:
WALLRUN → GRAPPLE → GRAPPLE → DASH → WALLRUN → DASH
