Unreal Engine
Team: 21 Devs
8 weeks
About
Key Responsibilities:
Sunbeat City is a first person parkour platformer set in a solar punk city. You play as Sunny, tasked to retrieve lost instruments scatted on the rooftops of the city in order to save tonight's concert
Visual Communication Pass
Leading design processes
Play on itch.io!
Level Overview
​Player Goal: Collect all instruments located throughout the city, and return them to the stage to save the concert!​
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USP: The player uses parkour to explore the city rooftops, with each instrument adding to a dynamic music composition.
Design Pillars
Dynamic Traversal
Dynamic elements scattered throughout the world interact with the player allowing them to parkour in unique ways.
Pick up & Play
As a player, I want the game to be easy to learn and hard to master. I want clear level design that enables my learning.
Musical Parkour
The music reacts to the player whilst they are moving. During gameplay they almost become an instrument within the orchestra.
Onboarding
Town Square
Downtown
Editor View
Start
Pre-Production
References & Research
Our game is set in a solar-punk Mediterranean city. Because a city is a large feat to design for, I wanted to make sure we had a clear baseline understanding of what a city and layout could look like in terms of architecture and urban planning. Therefore, I looked into the layout and size of some cities in Italy and Spain, ranging from Venice to the smaller towns like Rhonda, and even fictional cities such as Delfino Plaza from Super Mario Sunshine.
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To look for parkour gameplay moments, I explored real life parkour paths, and took photographs of Utrecht to explore architectural references before deciding to move to a Mediterranean style city.
Sketching
To explore layouts and level ingredient concepts, I drew many sketches to communicate my ideas, and to put my thoughts on paper to start planning a level. This created a baseline of areas and level ingredients that I could begin to explore by building them in Unreal Engine. Paintovers also helped develop gameplay ideas!
Gyms & Testing
In order to create engaging moments of gameplay, I focused on developing level beats utilising the level ingredients we had created. For this, I used a gym to test out different combinations of gameplay moments, to quickly learn what worked and what didn’t work and how I could integrate these fun instances into the main level.
Layout Development
As part of the process when designing the level, I created multiple blockouts that were scaled instances of what the level layout could look like, in order to explore the gameplay potential and playtest the feel as soon as possible. This mean that the level layout went through multiple iterations. Here is a breakdown of the iterations.
Early Blockouts
Why was this blockout created?
As the first test of a layout for the gameplay, this blockout had a central hub that connected outwards into gameplay areas in a very square format, giving us something to start testing in for scale, gameplay and player experience.
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What didn't work?
Through early testing, we found that the spaces felt too contained for players, especially the hub area. They wanted more space to explore the parkour moveset.
Why was this blockout created?
In this iteration, I expanded the Hub area and created branches with larger game spaces. I integrated the work of my co-level designer to test out gameplay in this space and allow for a non-linear experience with this layout.
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What didn't work?
While players enjoyed the larger hub and space scale, they felt that they were lacking a coherent parkour chain that involved an increase in verticality. Instead of multiple little challenges, players wanted one continuous moment of gameplay.
Final Layout
Version 1
- A focus on testing the layout and flow of the level
- Not enough edge of world and too much scope with the extra section for artists to cover​
The final layout focused on integrating chain of continuous parkour gameplay, while allowing the player to feel like they were exploring a wider city district to its full potential through alleyways and verticallity.
Version 2
- Iterating on the layout by cutting out a section and shifting the location of the player start, creating a linear level ending in the town square
- A clear base and starting point to iterate on gameplay, as the overall layout was received positively
Version 3
- Final in game version with iterated gameplay beats and set dressing
- Iteration on moment to moment gameplay such as parkour sequences
- Iteration on edge of world to feel like a coherent city environment without creating a full cityscape
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The Town Square
As part of the team, I was tasked with creating gameplay for the final area of the level, the 'Town Square'. The intent of the area was to give the player a final moment of parkour across the rooftops before ending on a vista of the entire level, showcasing all the paths that they took to reach the end goal.
When initially developing the area, the 'Town Square' was planned to be both the beginning area and the ending area, leading me to sketch out a circular level structure where the buildings served as parkour and as edge of world at the same time. This initial sketch was inspired by the Piazza del Campo in Siena, Italy; taking inspiration from it's tightly connected walls.
After building a quick example of the gameplay sketch to validate the idea, I used the blockout kit that our artists made to make the integration with proper models faster, as requested by our art team. I was able to test out this gameplay with internal playtesting before moving on to creating a proper edge of world and fleshing out the space more.
After creating a tighter and more contained gameplay space, we had our first 'early access' playtest, which allowed me to gather a good amount of feedback on the level as a whole, and the gameplay in the 'Town Square'. The main problem I identified was that the narrow corridors and the enclosed space felt unnatrual, and had players getting lost often as they tried to find their way back up.
In response to the playtesting data, I removed the circular layout of the town square, and created a more square and compact space, with fewer corridors that would block players, but rather created a more open space with areas that the player could explore before parkouring onto the roofs. This also meant that the edge of world was defined more clearly, and allowed me to improve on the gameplay.
Finally, I worked together with artists to set dress the iterated level space. This change from the empty square to a lively town square helped breathe life into our game, as we worked together to add intractable elements to the area and create interesting geometry that supported the space but did not interfere with the intended gameplay.
Learning from Players
Once we had a playable prototype, we asked players who would be interested in our game if they would like to participate in a playtest and help us improve what we already had. As a part of this, we shared a call for playtesters and feedback from the public on platforms such as Instagram & Tiktok. As a result we had 91 responses!
Level Feedback
With such a big number of responses, it was important to sift out the most vital feedback first. As a leading designer on the project, I worked together with my producer to prioritise the feedback we received to make actionable points.
Edge of World
The biggest reported issue was that players found multiple spots to escape the level. While we were aware of some places that still needed to have updated and improved collision, there were some areas that people found which we weren't aware of!
This was really helpful for making sure that these areas had proper collision, and signposted edge of world in the final level!
Clarity & Direction
In some areas of the level, it was unclear which way to go. For example, the parkour section that transitioned into the 'town square' was convoluted and hid the direction that the player needed to go in.
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Because of this, I shifted the parkour element to open into an archway, allowing the player to see their next goal clearly.
As a result of so much player engagement, we were able to improve the level greatly, and I'm very thankful for that!
Project Takeaways
This was a fun project! A first person platformer was not something that I had worked on before, so it provided some great learning opportunities.
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It was hard to design a city layout, I had never done it before and to create shapes and layouts that felt organic and still facilitated gameplay space correctly was really tough, especially in 8 weeks. I think that the layout we landed on serves the level well, but could have used more non-linear elements and approaches to add to the exploration feeling that parkour naturally creates.
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While I love the art that was created for the game, I do think that overall the readability of the level is lost. If I could go back, I would definitely communicate with artists to set up a clear visual language to signpost and lead the player towards parkour elements, making them stand out with VFX and highlighting them to to the player with sight-lines.
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As someone who took up a leading position in the team, I learned from the challenges of being both an organiser and supervisor as well as a designer myself. I learned to split my time between the two processes, and how to get a team to stay on track and aligned with one vision.
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Overall, Sunbeat City allowed me to explore a lot of new avenues, and gave me so many learning opportunities I was able to grow from!
