Level Desing
Index
When in 2005 I started to write my first novel, The Last Book of the Library, I designed a lot of content, like characters, languages or races. I lost most of that content, but one of the few things that were saved is this map. The map represents the area of Jearim, divided into smaller areas where fairies born and live. I toke the names from the Bible and I chose them by their meaning, like Quiriat-Jearim (Kiryat Ye’arim. Hebrew: קִרְיַת יְעָרִים) that means Town of Forests.
The idea was that Jearim was divided into two equal parts: The Dark Jearim and Jearim. Separated by the desert of Jesimón and the mountain Asiur. The mountain would have one side white, burned with black magic (the side of the Bézer Mines) and one side (that in the map is not represented) covered in vegetation. From that side, a waterfall, of diamond waters, falls and creates the River Etamin and its streams. In the center of Jearim would be the city of Quiryat-Jearim with the palace in the middle. Then the lake Great Mirror with the library, Quiryat-Sefer, situated in a cliff, where lives the watchmen in houses made with the stone of the cliff.
Each time that I write a story I do a lot of designs, the most part without concepts. But for this novel, Secrets, I did tons of blueprints and concepts about how I imagined Adelaida’s house.
Adelaida’s house was designed and built it by her brother Dagon. Dagon was obsessed with the idea that the murderer of his parents would come back to kill him too. For this reason, he designed a house made to kill. With secret tunnels and traps between the walls and a crematory in the basement. My problems came when I try to draw the blueprints and I realize that my first design had no sense. I changed it several times trying to fix the different architectonical problems that were appearing. Finally, I reached the solution to put the traps system in the basement with the crematory beneath.
This game is situated in a simple room where the player needs to investigate different objects to escape. I decided to add a second room (the bathroom) to give the players more space to investigate.
In this ocasion, I used the tool Draw.Io to create a simple reference blueprint that my team could use to design the puzzles and to help me to know which assets I needed to draw. Then, I used Photoshop to build the level and be sure that I was leaving enough space for the players to walk and investigate.
This is my first big game. The map represents Navia Rural Zone. It is a small area that has (more or less) 1.4 km from end to end. On the map, we can see the main road (in yellow), the fields, Corvo village, Pregaria lake, the Forest (that in the game is called Dead Trees Forest), and the start of Navia City at the north. In Corvo, we can see the Church (in the north) and the village’s square in the middle.
The next two maps (Nothings Spawn Map and Ánimas Spawn Map) show the area where these enemies will spawn. In the Nothings case, the zone covers almost the entire map, and you can see in the north their camp near to the lake. The Ánimas case is more specific. Each member of the Rite has a particular spawn/combat area. In the map, you can see it marked with the white circles and the picture of each member.
I will add more details to this map and more level design when the project moves forward.
