Level & Game Designer
Etherborn: Shapes of a Memory
Duties: Level and Puzzle Designer, Artist (including VFX, materials, models).
Tools: Unity, 3D Studio Max, Photoshop, paper and pencil.
This level comes soon after the main character is born into the world. It follows her introspection efforts as she navigates the unknown and starts to learn how the world around her works. From a design perspective, the theme also reflects the player’s journey on a conceptual level, as this stage is used to deepen the understanding of the core game mechanics non-verbally, through observation and practice.
The mood and visuals are inspired by a combination of the art of Giorgio de Chirico and Zdzisław Beksiński. From Beksiński I took his ambiences’ thickness, while the biggest influence from de Chirico was the feeling of suspended time (a staple of his style, the metaphysical painting). I evoked this feeling through a combination of stage pacing, decoration, colors, VFX, and music. Ultimately, it also serves a design purpose, as it sets the mood for a slow paced exploration where frustration is reduced and trial and error becomes more acceptable.
My Tasks
- Designed and tested level-specific game mechanics.
- Created art mockups to validate the style.
- Designed independent puzzles and situations and set an appropriate order to create a sense of progression and pacing.
- Planned and built the gray boxes.
- Provided the creative vision and ensured every member of the team was working towards it.
- Communicated with the music composer to set intentions, mood, and genre.
- Did the technical setup of interactive elements, such as switches and moving pieces.
- Sequenced and gameplay cutscenes.
- Manually configured the camera system across the whole level.
- Modeled and implemented most of the art assets, including 3D models, textures and materials.
- Created new shaders whenever needed (using Amplify Shaders).
- Optimized and reworked certain shaders for consoles, with the goal of displaying practically the same visuals across all platforms.
- Designed and set up baked and real-time lights, VFX, sky, LUTs and particles.
Linear paths as a learning curve
Before the creation of this level, I realized a large number of people playing the vertical slice were having a rough time thinking in 3D. Even people that were enjoying the style of the game on every other aspect were struggling too much with spatial reasoning. There is a small tutorial level at the beginning of the game, but it was clearly not enough. I wanted more people to be able to enjoy the game, so I created this stage with the intention of making a smoother learning curve. It insists on the core gravity-shifting mechanics, and the secondary one: the orbs and switches combo (seen in the videos below).
To achieve this, I created this level as a highly controled area, where the different gameplay situations are not intertwined (unlike the following levels), but instead arranged as individual sets in a row, separated with breathing sections. Equally important are the visuals. Compared to other abstract parts of the game, they are based on more grounded structures, such as bridges, cliffs or a greenhouse. All of these can be recognized and understood by any user. This makes the thought process more focused on learning the gameplay and less on understanding the environment, while the core mechanics feel more impactful (“wow, I’m walking on the side of the bridge!?”). Interacting with abstract environments can be beautiful, but video games usually need recognizable subjects to reduce the frictions of interactivity. I started making this level relatively late into development, but if I had to remake the game, I would certainly use real-world architecture a lot more.
1. Each section is designed to teach a concept through practice. This video shows the first interaction of the level with the switch and orb. It is worth noting that this situation mirrors a similar one from the tutorial level, where a prompt displays the button used to interact. Since this is the only kind of interaction in the game, here we were able to remove the prompt.
2. Now it gets slightly more complicated, as this situation involves two switches, a little bit of exploration and shifting the gravity.
This also teaches two additional concepts:
a) Some bridges use more than one switch.
b) Orbs can be removed and placed elsewhere.
3. After a long bridge and a hallway where the player can catch breath for a few seconds, they arrive to this puzzle. It is the largest difficulty spike in the level, since the previously learned concepts start to get mixed in more interesting ways. The entrance is high enough to be a point of no return, making this an isolated isle of gameplay.
4. The greenhouse is perhaps one of my favorite bits of the entire game. Here I applied the core mechanics on a building inspired by the real world (more specifically, Art Nouveau iron buildings).
During playtesting, I noticed people were quite enjoying this bit. If I had to remake Etherborn, I would use many more real-world references!
5. Finally, the last section is mostly to reiterate on the gravity mechanics, but with a surreal setting composed of bridges going in multiple directions.
Although they seem simple, a lot of thought went into the style and measures of these bridges. They can be walked from any orientation without getting stuck, and allow the player to shift gravity through its inner arches.
Additional Credits
Music: Gabriel Garrido Garcia
Producer and 3D art assistant: Alexandra Escudero Pérez
Lead programmer: Carles Triviño Massó
Additional programming: Miquel R. Gámez
Sound FX: Matias Lizana
Character animations: Frederic Vergés, David Boada
