Project: Stuck in the Loop.
For my final year project I wanted to create a ‘meta-play’ feeling game where a office worker would be dropped into a handful of unique scenarios. This game idea is strongly inspired by The Stanley Parable.
I had set myself to create 3 levels that would be narrated in an ironic tone.
- Starting level for each loop (Office)
- Scenario 1: Cliff level
- Scenario 2: Wild West level
- Scenario 3: Underdeveloped level
Within each level I aimed to make the player do a single, simple thing. For example the cliff level I want the player to simply walk off the edge, or in the Wild West level I simply want the player to interact with the opponent at the end of the street.
I aim for the game to take itself very unseriously during gameplay.
Below are some screenshots of early > late level development.
Wild West Level:
This was the first level I developed, and I wanted to ensure I got the vision correct the first time. Creating a whitebox to base my ideas off helped massively in visualising the final product.
I firstly created a landscape making use of the Gaea tool (explained further in the cliff level) and added the whitebox on top of it. From here it was a case of replacing whitebox buildings with finalised assets.
Cliff Level
The first screenshots are making use of a procedural landscape generation tool called Gaea.
From there I imported them into the unreal level, and applied an auto-material onto the landscape and tweaked until it gave me the finish I desired.
I then made use of various assets from asset packs to populate the level, and deliberate use of fence-posting to confine the player within the playspace.
Starting Office Level
To sell the feeling surreal nature of the game I begun with creating a completely white texture to apply to a huge sphere that encompassed the surrounding area of the level; acting as a blank skybox.
I begun level design with adding the walls to confine the player space, then filled out the interior in a highly methological manner to make the space feel ‘lived in’ and personable. Alot of time went into the details of the placement of assets in this level.