Slay. Upgrade. Dominate.

Octopocalypse is an arena-shooter that is as chaotic as it is whacky. Players will undergo a frantic arms race to upgrade the weapon & abilities of their hero, in a desperate bid to survive against endless waves of enemies. Experience a handcrafted, stylised arena that is full of possibilities and danger.

You play as an Octopus fighting to survive in a fish tank. you will be matched against a variety of enemies and stage hazards how long can you survive? However, You are not without your tricks as you have a set of offensive and defensive skills that will prove vital in the face of danger. Alongside these, as you fight you will gain the chance to upgrade these skills eventually becoming unstoppable. Octopocalypse features 1 arena and 3 skills that have a wide range of upgrades to choose from.

This project was a 10-week long assignment. I was the dedicated Level Designer of a multidisciplinary team consisting of 11 members.

1 Producer

2 Designers

- 1 Gameplay Designer

- 1 Level Designer (My Role)

4 Programmers

- 4 Gameplay Programmers

4 Artists

- 2 3D Environment Artists

- 1 3D Character Artist

- 1 2D Concept Artist

This project was started on the 14th of June and was developed until the 20th of August. During this time I had a wide range of Jobs ranging from Level Design to Audio Design. Gameplay and UI Design was allocated to my other Designer Colleague.

Below you can view gameplay, screenshots and read more about my roles and responsibilities on this project.

As mentioned prior my main focus for this project was Level Design. Being the only Level Designer on the development team meant that I was solely responsible for all things related to level design. This includes the designs and white boxes themselves but also other related tasks such as art asset lists and in some cases first, pass art implementation.

Being the teams Level Designer took up most of my time during this project however I was also assisting in other areas such as Audio Design. My Audio Designer role meant that I was responsible for creating or sourcing audio assets that we would be using throughout the game. this includes gameplay-related sounds as well as the soundtrack. I took this role because I was the most experienced in working within sound editing software such as Audacity as well as others were busy with their areas and as we only had time to implement one arena Level Designing took a backseat in comparison to other, more influential, areas of design such as gameplay.

Finally, I also had a minor influence in UI Asset sourcing and creation. The UI Layouts were left to my other designer colleague the assets for the buttons, icons and other UI elements were left to me to source or create. I decided to take up this role because our Art team consisted of two 3D Environment Artists, 1 Concept Artist and a 3D Character Artists. Not having a dedicated UI Artists meant that someone would have to take over their role in UI Asset Development and given that I have experience in Programs such as Photoshop.

Here is a list of everything that I worked on towards the completion of this Project:

• Level Design (Pre-Pivot) (NI)

  • Research

  • A Story About My Uncle

  • Cluster Trucks

  • CyberHook

  • Level Beat Chart

  • Level Design Philosophy

  • Example Level 2D Map

  • Example Level Whitebox

• 2.5D Push/Pull Prototype

  • Blueprints (NI)

• Level Design (Post-Pivot)

  • Research

  • Risk of Rain 2

  • Call of Duty Zombies

  • Hades

  • Reworked Level Beat Chart

  • Reworked Level Design Philosophy

  • 2D Level Designs

  • Arena 1

  • Arena 2 (NI)

  • Arena 3 (NI)

  • 3D Whitebox's in Engine

  • Arena 1

  • Arena 2 (NI)

  • Arena 3 (NI)

• Audio Sourcing & Tweaking (Coordinated with Curtis)

  • Player Sounds

  • Enemy Sounds

  • Ambient Sounds

  • UI Sounds

  • Placeholder Music

  • Main Menu

  • Gameplay

• Art Assets Sourcing & Tweaking (Coordinated with Curtis)

  • UI Assets

  • Main Menu Buttons

  • Ability & Upgrade Icons

  • Fonts

  • Cursor

• Biweekly Presentations to Tutor team from First Playable Onwards

(Except for 12th August)

• • Video Showcase Creation

  • Presenting the PowerPoints created by Curtis

  • Assist in building and prepping for Showcase

• Keeping my Tasks on Jira updates as well as creating and providing descriptions of my tasks

*(NI) - Not Implemented within Final Game

Originally Octopocalyse, called Skyrush back then, was designed to be a first-person movement focused 3D platformer where the player was tasked with using a grappling hook and several other abilities to traverse bite-sized levels in the fastest way possible where the player would be given a rating for that level based upon how fast they completed the level.

The game was to follow in the footsteps of A Story About My Uncle, Clustertruck and Cyberhook.

I had started research and working on creating a Level Design Philosophy (What makes a Skyrush level a Skyrush Level?). Cyber Hook became my main focus when researching how already existing games handle bite-sized level designs and how these levels make effective use of the gameplay mechanics at hand. Cyberhook is a first-person grapple based platformer that relies heavily on swift movement and momentum preservation. This overview was exactly what we were looking to make as a team therefore I researched the Structure, Timings, Difficulty and Skill Ceilings of 5 different levels across different chapters. Below you can see my findings:

To sum up I found that Cyberhook mostly uses a bite-sized level design lasting anywhere from 30 seconds to 1 minute depending on player skill. The Difficulty of the level does not correlate with its length. i.e. there are easier levels within the game that last longer than some of the more challenging ones. Difficulty in Cyberhook is determined mainly by the complexity and precision required to swing yourself throughout the level. Easier levels tend to be more open in design allowing for less accurate movement to still be successful. Due to the open designs, the easier levels also tended to have more shortcuts that allow you to skip large portions of the levels. This links to the Skill Ceiling because to perform these large shortcuts the player will need to build and maintain a large amount of momentum in a short amount of time. Using what I found out I developed a Level Design philosophy that I was going to stick to when developing the levels for the Game.

Having an idea now about how these levels were constructed to work in conjunction with their related gameplay mechanics I took to creating a first pass Level Beat Chart, outlining what I was going to include in each of the planned levels. This beat chart allows me to ensure that I can create a difficulty curve throughout the game as a whole making sure that the game doesn't feel too punishing to players but also offers them enough of a challenge to prevent border and make them want to push on further throughout the game.

The creation of this beat chart allowed me to further continue my level design journey. During this time The Programming team were currently prototyping our gameplay mechanics that had been designed mainly by my Gameplay Designer colleague, Curtis. This, therefore, meant that I was basing my entire level design work off of a vision that isn't ideally what I would have wanted despite this at the time I didn't see any reason to wait for the prototypes to be finished. in the meantime, I was pushing the beat chart levels through my Level Design pipeline seen below.

Once I was presented with the prototype of our grappling mechanics which was the core of our game I started to push the 2D top-down level designs into the engine by building them using basic Unreal Engine 4 Assets. During this time I was also experimenting with the prototype seeing what potentially unintended fun I could find in its current state.

Unfortunately, as a team, we were unsure if this was the correct direction to push the game. After we had tested the Grappling mechanics as a team we were struggling to find the fun. Conflicted about whether we should continue to make a first-person platformer, we sat down as a team and returned to the drawing board. Within a week we had made the hard decision to pivot the game pushing it into a 3rd person arena shooter. The main rationale behind this was we realised that it would be much safer and easier for us to "find the fun" within the game.

We had started to experiment with other styles of games seen below:

• 2.5D Platformer with a Push / Pull Mechanic

• Gravity Reversal Puzzle Platformer

• Gravity Manipulation Puzzler

• Portal Inspired Puzzle Platformer

• 3D Arena Shooter (Later Became Octopocalyspe)

We did manage to reuse some of the work we had done 2 weeks prior mainly within the style and theme. However, Level Designs had to completely change from a linear platformer to that of an arena shooter. This meant that prior work on Level Design Philosophy, Level Beat Charts, 2D Maps and 3D White boxes all had to be reworked to fit a 3D Arena Shooter. As you can imagine this set me very far back in my level design journey but I would have it no other way as it was vital for the health of the game.

For the new game concept (3D Arena Shooter) I designed three Areas that we were looking to add within the game as a target goal within the 8 weeks we had as development left. unfortunately, only 1 of the three Arenas made it into the final version of the game due to complications during development (Overscope & Crunch Stress).

The new game idea was heavily inspired by Risk of Rain 2, Call of Duty: Zombies and Killing Floor 2

After reworking the Level Design Philosophy I could begin to start designing and building levels within the engine. The process I went through to rework the Level Design Philosophy was identical to the first iteration however in the context of a 3rd person Arena shooter rather than a 1st Person Grapple Platformer. To get an idea of how I would be needing to design levels for a 3rd Person arena shooter I looked at Risk of Rain 2 to see how they tackled the task of designing arenas. Below you can view my findings:

This new iteration of the level beat Chart was reworked to fit the new game idea of being a 3rd Person Arena shooter. The contents are still the same but now we had a new focus on creating a wacky and chaotic experience which I had to take into consideration when I was designing the arenas. The arenas had to allow for and actively encourage chaotic and whacky gameplay to fit the needs of this beat chart.

Arena 1 is the first of three designed arenas was designed to get players accustomed to the world and mechanics featured within Octopocalypse. Therefore it includes 1 large landmass with smaller islands surrounding it. The large landmass was designed to be a very simple base but to allows for more skilled players to traverse it in unique ways that newer players might not have thought of. It was specifically designed in this way because originally we were going to move the player across multiple different areas as the game progresses, which would eventually return the player to Arena 1 thus to prevent the players from getting bored of Arean 1 my idea was to allow them to showcase their "mastery" of the map by offering more skilful ways to traverse the Arena using their abilities or the provided Jump Pads in creative ways that would prove vital in the higher waves that pose a much harder challenge. Below you can see the progression of Arena 1 from the initial 2D map to the final iteration that was implemented in the final build of Octopocalypse.

As you can see the layout hardly changed through the pipeline. This was mainly because we as a team felt like it achieved its role in being the first Arena players fought in. It showcases many different Level Design features such as level hazards, verticality, chokepoints and open areas in an easy to understand and basic format which is exactly what I was planning to provide for the first arena. These Level Design features would be greatly expanded upon in the later Arenas (Arenas 2 & 3). As for the Visuals they went through a large shift towards the latter half of development. Before the Fish Tank Change, we had a game that felt good to play but there was nothing unique about it. We essentially had Risk of Rain 2 with an Octopus. Therefore we decided as a team to lean into a comedic theme to try and distinguish ourselves from a Risk of Rain clone.

For the Next Arena, I wanted to develop an early idea I had during the Pivot which was to have three Islands that almost act as miniature Arenas in of themselves combined into one map. Unfortunately this design along with the Arena 3, given the time constraints we faced, especially due to the Pivot, never made it past the white box phase of development. Despite this, my original plan for this Arena was to build upon the already present mechanics and features players first experienced in Arena 1. This meant including larger and more invasive Floor Hazards, Point-to-Point Lazers (These were unfortunately cut from final release) and riskier Jump Pad placements. Below you can see early forms of the Arena.

The Final Arena that I designed was focused around two peaks with a "valley-like" surrounding. The idea behind this is that the player would have to try to hold the advantageous positions during the waves being the two peaks on either side of the Arena. The "valley" is a dangerous fallback option filled with a large fall hazard and tight chokes. positioning the player on the two highest points of the map allowed for a greater range advantage against the enemies which I recognise potentially could be too powerful and would require reworking but given that this Arena didn't make it past the Whitebox stage either Level Design oversights like these were never investigated further

Even though a large portion of my work this module never saw its position within the final game I still very much enjoyed this Module and have learnt more about potential issues and setbacks that a dedicated Level Designer can face. Given my role in the development team, I was free to assist the gameplay design with Curtis but being the Level Designer anything that could potentially affect gameplay was always highlighted to the rest of the team with Curtis ultimately taking the final decision based upon the rest of the team's thoughts. As a Game Developer in any role, it is extremely important not to get attached to any work I create as games often and are likely to go through redesigns or slight changes that could make all prior work redundant as seen with my Pre-Pivot work this project or in a worst-case not make it into the game entirely as with my latter 2 Arena designs.

As mentioned prior I was also mostly responsible for sourcing and editing sound effects for our game. While I'm not explicitly an Audio Designer I do have experience within Audacity and as audio had a higher priority than extra arenas my work was shifted towards audio instead. I was responsible for Sourcing all of the Gameplay related audio as well as the Placeholder Music tracks we used to give our outsourced soundtrack designer an idea of what we were hoping for from them.

Below is all of the Audio Sound Files I was responsible for importing into the build ready for implementation from our programming team.

Player:

• Primary Fire

• Knockback

• Jump

• Dash

• Time Dilation Start

• Time Dilation End

• No Time Hurt Sound

• Gaining Time Loopable Sound

Enemy:

• Exploder Enemy (Pufferfish)

  • Charge up

  • Explode

  • Hover

• Grunt Enemy (Seahorse)

  • Fire

  • Hover

  • Death

• Tank Enemy (Stone Golem)

  • Hover

  • Fire

  • Melee Attack (Slam)

  • Death

• Static Enemy (Eel in Diving Helmets)

  • Attack (Bite)

  • Idle Growl

Ambient:

• Jump Pad Activation

• Lava Ambient Bubbling

• Geyser Start-up

• Geyser Activation

UI:

• Button Click

• Button Hover

• Window Close/Change

Placeholder Music Inspiration:

• Main Menu Music

• Gameplay Loopable Combat Music

The main method used for sourcing these sounds was using free online libraries and tweaking the original sound to better fit its role within the game in Audacity. The Placeholder music was implemented early so that we could get a feel of how it fits within the theme of the game and once we as a team were happy with it we sent the audio files off along with other similar inspirations from established products to our outsourced team.

Along with being a Level Designer and a partial Audio Designer I was also helping out in UI Design. While I was not responsible for the UI Wireframes I was responsible for sourcing UI Assets to be used within these wireframes and eventually the final product. I was tasked with sourcing and in some cases editing UI icons, Ability Icons, UI Buttons, Fonts and the Cursor. The main method I chose to handle this task was to look for Assets online using free online libraries and using my knowledge in Adobe Photoshop to tweak or add to them to have them more accurately fit their purpose within the game. Below you can see all of the UI Assets I Sourced and imported into the engine ready for Implementation by our Programming Team.

Ability Icons:

• Dash

• Time Dilation

• Wind Blast (Knockback)

• Primary Fire

Ability Upgrade Icons:

• Damage Boost in Time Dilation

• Reduced Time Dilation Effect but Longer Duration

• Wind Blast Does Damage

• Dash Does Damage

• Dash Gives Invulnerability

• Consecutive hits with Primary Fire Are AOE

• Dash Knocks enemies Away

• Wind Blast Can Be Charged

• Gain Health When Killing Enemies

• Increase Maximum Health

• Increase Primary Fire Damage

• Increase the Number of Jump Charges by 1

• Increase the Number of Dash Charges by 1

UI Menu Buttons:

• Arrow Buttons

• Main Menu Buttons

• "Close Window" Button

• Sliders

• Window Backgrounds

Fonts:

• Stylistic Font

• Informational Font

Other:

• Score Icon

• Cursor