Xenophyte is a first-person, die-and-retry, parkour game inspired by Ghostrunner (2020) where you play as Brax, an infected individual who tries to escape the abandoned laboratory with his weapon and his plant arm. You will jump, slide, wallrun, slash your enemies and try to survive until the end...
It was made in UNREAL ENGINE 5 and I was Level Designer.
LEVEL DESIGN INTENTIONS
As the Level Designer on this project, I wanted to create a fast-paced and challenging parkour. The point is to give the player options on where to go first and what to use, but everything has to be placed in a way so he can think quickly and change strategy if he dies.
It was my first time doing a parkour game, so I did a lot of research on Mirror's Edge (2008) and Ghostrunner (2020) to learn as much as possible before making the level myself. It was a lot of fun! I took the best techniques from both games to make my own.
Here is part of the research I did on both games, and how/why I used those techniques in my level:
L0 PLAN OF THE LEVEL
Here we can see I'm giving options to the player. When he arrives to this part, he sees the enemy and he has to think quickly. The player can hide behind pillars, get higher ground or use the grappling hook on the flower. He can decide what to do and how to defeat the enemy.
Here, the player can choose to take one of the three parkour paths. They will impact his way to defeat the enemy a little further, letting the player choose his strategy and giving him different ways to achieve his goal even if he dies multiple times. It makes it less frustrating if he can try different ways to approach the situation.
Here, we can see the color yellow used to guide the player. The environment is also placed so the guiding lines are clear for the player. Since it's a fast-paced game, he needs to know exactly where to go at all times to keep the flow going.