Good Boy
ROLE
Lead Level Designer
DESCRIPTION
Play as a dog in this action RPG to help your owner stay warm, fed, and energized to survive the night into the next day. Explore the city streets to find items within dumpsters, trashcans, and street-side cardboard boxes. It’s a rough life and you can only try using anything you can find, pizza slices, discarded clothing, and even alcohol to warm the spirit.
Watch out! Other street dogs roam the city, and they’re territorial. Fight your way through these packs or risk losing all the items you’ve gathered. The life of your beloved owner is on the line!
Design Goals
The main design goal of the map was to balance the three most important aspects of the level that could fit the gameplay Exploring, Combat, and Collect. This gave the players an Adventure and RPG game experience.
Exploring
Combat
Collect
CONTRIBUTIONS
Level Design
-
Paper layout to Final Stage
-
Collaborating with Environment artist
-
Compositing the level
-
Placing the collectables
Gameplay
-
Other Design decisions
-
Balancing the Game
Playtesting
-
Working along with the Q/A team to make iterations to the map and other values of the game
Level Design
Concept and Flow
The level for the good dog required a small part of the city, The game takes place for three days each day represents one level. To do that I did some research first and gathered some images of urban cities and back alleys. After that, I did some rough sketch layouts of the map to get a clear picture. Later I started to block out the level in Unity I placed white boxes for buildings and other small objects like dumpsters and trashcans from the player can get collectibles to maintain stats.
Challenges and Resolutions
One of the biggest challenges was to make a part of the city mostly back alleys where the player doesn't get lost easily and should be able to find their way back to the center (The place of the Homeless man). After making a few blockout I realized the level was too big or too small and the players are getting lost in the level. To solve this problem I came up with a creative solution, which was to block a few parts of the level each day. For example, on Day 1 player only gets to move around on a linear street and a few alleys. that way I can open the whole level of the player day by day and by the last day, players get to cover the whole map.
Level 3D Blocking
Level Layouts Per Day
On the first day, the player (Dog) starts at the center of the map with the homeless man player's objective is to go around and collect items for him. Dog walks around on a ¨L¨ shaped street with a few small alleys which don't lead anywhere so there is no way the player is lost but can still collect items and fight other street dogs.
On the Second day, the map is extended a little more here the player can walk around more and also get to take shortcuts from back alleys to avoid other dogs, find extra collectibles, and also to reach the homeless man faster before the day ends.
On The third day, The last day of the game, One side of the map in which the player was playing for the past two levels is completely blocked and the player gets to explore the new part of the town. In which they get to combat with much stronger dogs and it's also snowing to show the days are getting cold. In this level, the player walks on a linear path but also has many backdrop alleys and collectibles hidden behind the buildings.
