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Frits de Laat
Level designer
About A.R.D.
Alien Removal Division is a fast paced, action-packed first-person shooter, set in a military research facility during the 1950s. The base has been overrun by aliens and you find yourself, as the only survivor, at the centre of the invasion. Your escape will be challenging, but you’ll have an array of weapons and movement abilities to help you during your fight and on your getaway.
Project role
Level designer
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Creating levels from research and sketching to final iteration
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Creating level design ingredients
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Playtesting and iterating on content and level design ingredients
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Set dressing levels
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QA testing level design ingredients
Check it out here!
Awards
IGAD Year 3 Game awards 2022
Winner best design
Winner best programming
Grappling hook level
Workflow
References & Scene blockouts
Level blockout
First blockout of the level
Second iteration of the level
Final iteration & Set dressing
Final playthrough of the level
Flythrough of the level
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This section was focused around challenging the player with the grappling hook mechanic, while also making use of other LDI combined with it. The level was planned in a way where the player could use full advantage of momentum to quickly traverse it.
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Real life and game references were looked at for blocking out certain areas within the level.
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Scenes were build using the 3C's metrics and then tested and iterated before creating the whole level.
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The level was tested and iterated upon multiple times internally and with members from our community Discord, taking away notes and action points to improve and polish the level.
Level breakdown
Level flowchart
First grapple
Grapple & Turbine
Double Grapple
Quick grapple reflex
Double Turbine
Collapsing platforms
Jump & Grapple
Double Turbine & Grapple
Massive Turbine
Tension graph
Design techniques
Leading the player
The red lights are used in contrast with the environment to lure in the player and guide them forward into the level.
Worldbuilding through exposition
Broken ceiling lights, torn down walls and electrified water are used to indicate the decaying state of the world.
The water being electrified also indicates to the player it is dangerous, so the player will try to avoid it.
Escape segment
First blockout of the level
Final iteration before being scrapped
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The escape segment was focused around trying to escape the collapsing facility, while also trying to climb back out of it to the surface.
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This section was iterated upon to improve further quality.
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Due to scope, this section was scrapped halfway through development.
Level design ingredient
Rotating walls based on timer
Final iteration of the rotating wall
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Implemented a level design ingredient that would enhance and complement the player movement kit.
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First iteration was focused on timing based movement.
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Final iteration was focused around boosting the player's movement speed, enabling them further to gain and use momentum to progress through the level.
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The level design ingredient was implemented using Unreal Engine blueprinting.
Constant rotating wall
Set dressing
Set dressing of the grappling hook level
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The level design team helped out with set dressing during development, to lighten the workload for environment art.
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Environment art made art example levels, which level design based their own set dressing on.
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My responsibilities were set dressing my grappling hook level, as well as part of the time trial challenge.
Research
Overview
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Research was done on multiple questions the team had during the concepting phase.
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My research included: Set piece progression, encounter design and player leashing.
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Most research done was used for an early version of the concept, which later got changed due to us disproving and changing certain concepts.
Set-piece progression
Excerpts from research document
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Main focus of the research was finding ways to re-use areas with slight differences in geometry and a new quest.
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Sekiro's Ashina castle was a great example on how an area can be re-used, while still feeling like a new experience.
Player leashing
Excerpts from research document
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Main focus of the research was finding out how other games use different ways of leashing on how to guide the player in a more natural way.
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Part of this research was later incorporated into my level design workflow.
Encounter design
Excerpts from research document
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Main focus of the research was finding different types of encounters and how they could be used separately or combined to create interesting gameplay scenarios.
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Learning the ruleset on how most encounters operate from the core would allow us to create new and unique versions of them.
Reflection
Working on this project was a lot of fun, but also a real challenge, with my main work being on the grappling hook level. There were a lot of problems with the metrics of the grappling hook and keeping the level to a believable scale. The main challenge there was creating interesting game-play scenarios with the grapple hook as focus, but making sure it still had good flow. I managed to compensate for the large radius of the grapple point by making the level very linear, but that came at the cost of verticality and diversity in the level.
If I had the chance to re-create the level from scratch, I would make sure to make it more interconnected and vertical, to really complement the movement set of the player, and make the level overall more interesting to play through. Overall though, I am still pleased with how the level turned out, both giving the player a good challenge with the grappling hook, as well as being able to turn the block-out into a believable real space.
Frits de Laat
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