LUCAS PEJOUX - LEVEL DESIGNER
Project 5 - Unreleased
Project 5 is an Action Adventure in Top-Down perspective using a beloved THQ Nordic IP.
Responsibilities
On this project I honed my skills particularly in Level Art, and Lighting. Indeed, the role of the Level Designer was to concept, design, implement, dress and light the levels.
I also kept improving my encounter design skills by implementing encounters all throughout the levels, and giving feedback about the encounters my colleagues created.
I was also responsible for implementing level logic, as well as going over my colleagues' scripts to debug them and make sure they are error prone, and performance friendly.
Concepted and partly blocked out the opening level of the game.
Work
I was tasked to redesign the part below, it was part of a dungeon level. It needed rework because the space was designed as a band aid to fix a problem that no longer existed. And it was not to the standard we wanted it to be.
In order to do so I gathered all the info I needed and what we wanted to showcase in this area.
Unfortunately I cannot show nor explain what was happening exactly, but I made a first Blockout which was praised because it was way more fun and diverse than the previous one. I even included some new element to showcase, and everybody enjoyed it.
It then got green lit to go to the first dressing pass, you will find it below.
Unfortunately, this area was deemed too big for the time resources we had. It took me 2 days to dress the area to the state it is in the pictures above. And would have probably taken me the same amount of time to be at the quality standard of the game. I then had to redo it again, but way smaller this time.
This time, since it had to be smaller, I didn't have enough room to make it interesting gameplay wise. So I switched and tried to make a small room with an identity.
And in that I succeeded I think. I used the newly implemented water to create an eerie cave location that enters a broken wall to get back inside the dungeon.
I tried giving a narrative to this place with skeletons underwater that looms under the surface and create a scary feeling, as if it was its room.
You will find below some other locations I worked on.
One was not integrated in the game, because I used it as research on how I could dress rooms.
I redressed this area, keeping most of the initial design ideas intact. The problems here was bad lighting, and a dressing that was too noisy. So I took inspiration from the Shadow of War's crypt lighting with somber and filtered daylight with slight orange touches that drown away.
My idea here was to create a narrative where this place would be a tomb, and with the elevated area to be the tomb of kings/important people.
This area did not make it into the game, because it was just a level for me to research on how I could dress combat areas. I wanted to create a place that went from natural cave to more manmade structures built on the sides of the cave.
The idea of the manmade structure was that there was a bridge going over the deep chasm to reach the main gate of the structures. And down below are the jails and other skeletons of creatures who died in the fiery chasm.