Design:

The main goal of Axl Eration was to make a speedrun like shooter, with an emphasis on speed and tempo. The game was to be very arcadey and each level would have a scoreboard, whose main score was attributed to completion time. 

Conceptually the Level Design team outlined two level Arhetypes that we wanted to feature in the game. The Hallway type, which featured push pased design and goals, in form of an ever moving laser wall behind the player. This would force and encourage the player to keep on the move in highly liniear levels, that only featured smalle branching and remergin paths. 

The other Arhetype was the Arena type, where we instead switched to a pull-based method of keeping the player on the move. Here the exit door out of the level, which would be in the form of a circular arena, would only open after a certain amount of enemies where hunted downed and killed by the player. These levels would put the agression in the players hand, but would still reward speed inform of better completion times.

Thoughts and Reflections

Looking at the game in hindsight, having two different types of Levels in such a small level might have been somewhat overkill. While it was nice for pacing reasons, it would have been a bigger problem in a longer more exstensive play-experience. Having two room types also split our resources unnessesarily thin, as a lot of behaviours needed alternate versions for the other mode. Which is likely also one of the reasons as to why one of the two orginally planned arenas where cut, and merged into another level.

As the game idea grew, i also found that looking at 3D platformers and 3D Runners / Racers was a great boon for level design inspiration, for this type of game. I ended up focusing on a multi level design on the hallways, that had fast but difficult runways and platforming sections, which when the player failed to execute jumps, would result in the player landing on the slower but easiere area below. This was a nice difficulty dynamic that could be used to make the level way more replayable and engaging.

Group Acomplishments

Comming from out previous project, which was far from stellar, the team knew that we had to pull together, if this project had to succed. We managed to get a lot more of the pipeline up an running and improved our communication cross discplinarily by a significant margin. And while still far from perfect, the production and iteration time was greatly improved. 

A extra significant shoutout goes to the programming team, who really pulled it together and spent significant amount of resources to improve the workflow and tools available to the other proffesions.

Team :
"Necrobyte" 

Level Design

• Sebastian Madsen

• Joshua Christiansen

Graphics

• Nina Sas

• Johannes Bengston

• Clara Lindblad

Programming

• Albin Nilsson

• Hampus Siverson

• Jacob Reimer

• Axel Szelag

• Sebastian Szymanski

TA

• Nils Svenningsen
• John Behrens