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Drain Runner
Setting
Drain Runner is designed with a singular map located in a large sewer cistern with various tiles sections floating in the middle in a grid pattern. Every so often however, a tile will sink and a new tile randomly selected from the collection will fall in to replace it creating a constantly changing map that keeps the player moving for fear of sinking with the tiles. Each tile is designed with its own sub theming while still fitting into the grungy sewer setting, each with their own unique focus.
ROLE
Level Designer
DESCRIPTION
An arcade style rogue like set on an open environment consisting of constantly changing tiles, focused on mobility and fast paced gameplay created in UE4.
Created by a multi-disciplinary team of 19 with an 8 month time frame. (Note, this game is still in development and will improve.)
YEAR
January 2022 - August 2022)
GENRE
Arcade Rogue Like
PLATFORM
PC
Steam Link
Design Premise
Drain Runner is designed with a singular map located in a large sewer cistern an various island sections floating in the middle in a grid pattern. Every so often however, an island will sink and a new island randomly selected from the collection will fall in to replace it creating a constantly changing map that keeps the player moving for fear of sinking with the island. Each island is designed with its own sub theming while still fitting into the grungy sewer setting, each with their own unique focus.
Contribution
I was responsible for the design of several of the islands from paper to whitebox to final decorative pass. I worked closely with the art team to help develop the visual style of the game, determining asset lists and collecting images to help give the art team a direction.
White Boxes
Mainstreet
Mainstreet was the first tile section to be design. This tile focuses on moderate verticality and a heavy amount of grind rails.
Factory B
Factory B is designed like a chemical works of pipes and vats of hazardous materials. While still technically a white box level, already completed or acquired assets from other levels to relieve the workload and time requirements of others down the line.
Graveyard of Ships
The graveyard of ships is designed to challenge a player's spatial awareness. with minimal safe ground to stand on, players will have to keep to grind rails and bounce pads, constantly keeping in motion, thus needed watch where they're going.
Construction Site A
Meshing vertical gameplay and open terrain, this tile provides players with plenty of grind rails and high cranes to ride with an abundance of cover to break enemy AI line of sight on the ground.
White Boxes
Factory A
Factory A is designed as a higher risk enclosed space with less options to manuver.
Mushroom Forest
Taking inspirations from the forests moon of Endor and the Ewok civilization build among its branches, the mushroom forest focuses its design on verticality and grinding, encouraging players to stay above the forest floor.
Tower Ruins
The remnants of a once great set of buildings now lies a broken overgrown husk of its former glory. The tower ruins design focuses on verticality and confusion of pathways to challenge players. There are numerous paths to the prize at the top, but with so many "golden paths" that happen to crisscross over each other, players may just end up riding the wrong grind rail half way back to the start.
design process
Designing these levels started with the entire project team coming together and determining what kind of game we were going to build, determining the base mechanics and theming followed by smaller meetings of designers and artists to determine the details. In this case we determined the main character would be equipped with a prosthetic arm with a powerful magnet, allowing him to pick up enemies and other objects and throw them, as well as letting him grind on pipes. With the nature of our game's constantly changing map, it was determined that constructing the map as separate tiles.
With these guidelines set, I began research into potential aesthetic choices that would later affect overall design. I began researching artwork of "sewer cities" and "under cities" on websites like Pinterest and Artstation for ideas along with other sources such as the Anime "Deca-Dence" and the city of Zaun from the series "Arcane". In the end I determined shipping container blocks where an excellent building material as well as scrap metal and worn brick made for an excellent sewer aesthetic. All this collected imagery gives me a good visual in my head as to what this world will look like. I then began to compile a list of themes for the tiles to give each its own character.
Above Images collected from research and not generated by project team.
![IMG_0355[73]_edited.jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/c33513_0c1846e7c890423097311faae3b2457f~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_599,h_527,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/IMG_0355%5B73%5D_edited.jpg)