Project Overview
Engine: Unreal Engine 5
Development Time: 6 months
Team Size: 29
In a team of 29, I was one of the many level designers who worked on Light of Alariya. I worked on the landscape and a majority of the points of interest in the Sea of Remnants. I also worked with groups for the games story and collectables. Then, once all tasks were complete for the final launch I worked closely with my producer to test the game and report and issues that could be found.
Light of Alariya
Roles and Responsibilities
My main role in this project was to create and overlook the Sea of remnants section of the world. This area serves as the oldest location in the world, cluttered by giant skeletons and rock structures. I painted, landscaped most of the area. I also designed a majority of the points of interest in the area. Outside of the design and world building I worked with a team to write stories as a form of collectable, while also providing assistance to the major story of the game.
Level Design
As a level designer I was given the task of researching materials for Light of Alariya. I spent much time in pre-production researching open world games, real world dessert, oasis', and architecture. Once the theme was in placed the games map was split into 3 sections and I overlooked sea of remnants section of the map. From there I designed several points of interest ranging from observatories and jumping puzzles, to areas that served as places to explain the story.
The process of creating the sea of remnants was long with many iterations. Much of my early work was iterated on until it eventually made the world easy to understand. Rock structures were added to guide players through the world and more points of interest were created to decorate the world.
Early iteration of a point of interest jumping puzzle
Evolution Of the sea of Remnants' Observatory (earliest to current version left to right)
World Building
Once the points of interests were created and placed into the world I added details to the area to add to the worlds feeling. I placed sand in areas to show long the times had past, twisted and moved structures to show how long they have lasted. I added a camera cutscene in the area so that players could see the entire surrounding area of the Sea of remnants and placed murals in sections that connected to the story
Other work
Murals/Collectibles
Outside of level design and world build me and a small group of level designer worked out ideas for collectables that could be found across the world. We each had a theme for our section of the map and wrote short messages that connected with the games story.
Rock Structures
Any issue our team ran into when creating this open world game was filling in spaces between objectives. Certain assets felt repetitive and the art team was busy making so many other assets and materials. Therefore several level designers and I created our own rock Structures using existing assets to add depth to our world without having to rely on new assets.