Technical/Ludic/Narrative/Aesthetic

Understanding Technical, Ludic, Narrative and Aesthetic considerations when creating a 3D environment is very important to the game as a whole.

Aesthetically, my environment consists of a dungeon-like internal environment consisting of stone walls and floors which is dimly lit by fire torches. This is to convey the fact the player has been captured against their will and compel them that the aim is to escape the environment. The final boss battle takes place in a dusty amphitheater, which is meant to be kind of intimidating to the player and convey that this is an important battle.

Wall mounted fire torch

To help with the aesthetics, I am using mainly the following textures: Stone paving slabs for the area outside the arena, large stone chunks for the wall sections, cobbles for the walls and ceiling as well as the arena, and Sand and rock for the arena floor and the external area.

Main aesthetic materials

In a Ludic sense, by definition, the word Ludic is meant to encourage play. My environment is purposefully maze-like to encourage the player to explore and contains many challenges, such as small enemies to attack and, in future developments will contain puzzle elements and world-based hazards. All of these features are present specifically to add to the play experience of the player.

The map for my level is a maze, with branching routes, as you can see below.

Level map maze

The players are invited to explore, but they are also guided. Each floor section will subtly glow green once they have visited an area, allowing the player to find areas they haven't been.

Green guide light

The minion enemies placed throughout the game compel the player to continue exploring.

Spawned minions in the level

The Narrative of the level is the player being trapped against their will in the environment and the experience of reaching the goal, which is to escape the maze-like hallways of the dungeon to reach the final showdown with the boss and escape. While this isn't much of a narrative, it is enough to allow the player to have a goal in mind. The style of the game is kind of like an action RPG dungeon crawl where the main narrative is to reach the end of the dungeon.

The closing doors of the encounter rooms, which only open when the challenge is defeated helps with the Narrative of the level.

Door seen to the right

In a technical sense, and how it relates to level design, I have considered that performance of the game is most important so as not to get in the way of the gameplay. In this sense, most of the environment objects are relatively low poly with most of the detail coming from the textures used. The small minion enemies have very simple AI so as to not burden the CPU.

Low poly floor piece with detail texture