LEVEL DESIGN
This section covers the entire level design process for Façade, from the initial concept and steps, to the full process of creating the game's world, from start to finish
CONCEPTUALISING
For the level design, we began by looking into the layouts of old Victorian mansions, to get an idea of what rooms they would typically contain. From that, we drafted up a layout of our own mansion, with 12 rooms. We realised towards the end of production that 12 rooms was way too many for the artists to create, and overcomplicated the overall murder mystery, adding too many redundant rooms. We eventually cut down to 9 rooms, but this was very late on, but thankfully there wasn’t much shuffling in gameplay that needed to be done, as the cut rooms were ones without puzzles or much gameplay.
The responsibility of creating the layouts was divided equally among the designers, and we went to work, starting with the 2D layouts.
STAGE 1: 2D LAYOUTS
I started the process for each room by researching what kinds of items would typically be within the corresponding rooms of the Victorian Era. Taking that into consideration, I drafted top-down layouts of each room using draw.io, which were sent to the team for feedback after each iteration. Some of the props in the room were added with puzzle ideas in mind, and I made sure they had enough opportunity for interaction and gameplay. I also made sure to note where the player started when they entered the room.
STAGE 2: 3D LAYOUTS
Once the 2D layout had been adjusted and approved, I moved to create the room using SketchUp, decorating the room in the appropriate theme at the same time. This was to give an appropriate understanding of the proportions of the room, and allowed things to be adjusted when looked at in a 3D space. For some of the rooms, I also created a rougher version of the layout in Minecraft, to get a sense of what the room would look like from a first-person point of view.
The main issue faced up until this point was the lack of unit standardisation between 2D and 3D layouts, as well as between designers. This meant that there were subtle differences in room size and an unclear sense of scale, which led to increased work for artists, as they had to guess based on the layouts provided.
STAGE 3: HANDOVER AND IMPLEMENTATION
Once everything had been given in for feedback and refined based on that feedback to make sure for one last time that everything was up to par, the levels were handed to the artists, for them to create in a 3D program and to implement in the game build itself.
GALLERY
Pictures of the documents from the level design process, including 2D mockups and 3D layouts, as well as some early iterations of the rooms
