Roles: Lead Game & Level DesignerTasks: Original Pitch, Blocking, Level Scripting, Level Design Document & Research, High Concept Document
PSYBREAK is a first-person infiltration game in which you play as a covert agent with the ability to possess anyone during your assignments in a pulpy, 70’s retro futuristic world. It was developed as our end of 2nd year project after passing two pitch selections in collaboration with 7 other designers, 7 artists and 1 project manager.
PRE-PRODUCTION
Reference Gathering
We spent some time to think about the kind of place we’d want our demo mission to take place in. We quickly decided on a luxurious resort in the Swiss Alps, strongly inspired by Blofeld’s lair in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
Myself and the other two level designers, Nicolas Bridault and Rayan Farhat used a Miro board in common with level artists Eliot Tissot and Gabriel Rochette to nail the scale, vanity and zealous architecture worthy of a Bond villain. Since one of the main goals of the game is social infiltration, we focused a lot on large shared spaces like reception halls, bars and large vistas of the surrounding mountains.
Intentions & Objectives
Setting clear objectives for ourselves and the player during this mission was critical to showcase our main gameplay loop. We determined a fixed number of room, each with its own theme & ambience, level element to showcase and the role of NPC that appears in said space. Due to time constraints, we decided that the level playthrough wouldn’t take more than 10 minutes supporting 2 playstyles.
In parallel to that, I made a quick chart of the level objectives as shown to the player, how to accomplish them and what triggers the next ones.
LEVEL FLOW & MOLECULAR
Flow
After figuring out the main objectives, me and Nicolas Bridault sat down and wrote down what each playstyle entailed, which were the obstacles for each one and what consequence on the whole reception they’d have. One would be focused on distracting guards, getting information by dialogue and the other on brute force, chaos and destruction.
It also served as an internal “player objective”, step-by-step detailed view on exactly what would be possible and with what elements within this limited scope.
Molecular Diagram
After establishing level progression, we wanted to figure out how each space would connect to each other while summarizing which main level elements would be present.
After we trimmed down the number of rooms a bit and decided on two floors, I was in charge of making a molecular diagram representing all rooms, their level of security (requiring possession of certain characters)