Tribe

Level Design Tips and Examples

• Is fun to navigate – It uses a clear visual language to guide the player along the primary path, and creates interest through verticality, secondary paths, hidden areas and maze elements.
• Does not rely on words to tell a story – Aside from the explicit narrative called out by story and objectives, good level design delivers implicit narrative trough the environment, and provides players with gameplay choice from which to create their own emergent narrative.
• Tells the player what to do, but not how to do it – It makes sure mission objectives are clearly communicated, but lets players complete them any way they like, and, where feasible, in any order.
• Constantly teaches the player something new – It keeps the player engaged by continuously introducing new mechanics all the way through the game, and prevents old mechanics from becoming stale by applying modifiers or reusing them in unusual ways.
• Is surprising – Classic Aristotelian pacing is not always appropriate for an interactive medium, and it is not enough to simply pace all your levels to the standard “rollercoaster” model.  Good level design is not afraid to take risks with the pace, aesthetics, locale and other elements to create an experience that is fresh.
• Empowers the player – Videogames are escapism and, as such, should eschew the mundane.  Furthermore, good level design reinforces players’ empowerment by allowing them to experience the consequences of their actions, in both the immediate, moment-to-moment gameplay, and in the long term, through the holistic design of all levels.
• Allows the player to control the difficulty – It gears the main path toward players of basic ability, presenting advanced players with optional challenge through clearly communicated opportunities of risk and reward.
• Is efficient – Resources are finite.  Good level design creates efficiencies through modularity, bi-directional gameplay and integrated, exploratory bonus objectives that make use of the whole play-space.
• Creates emotion – it begins at the end, with the desired emotional response, and works backwards, selecting the appropriate mechanics, spatial metrics  and narrative devices to elicit that response.
• Is driven by the game’s mechanics – above all, it showcases the game’s mechanics through the medium of the level, to reinforce the uniquely interactive nature of video games.

Composition in Level Design

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MateuszPiaskiewicz/20140817/223513/Composition_in_Level_Design.php

Environmental Storytelling in Games

http://www.jethrojongeneel.com/articles/T4.php

Enemy Characters

https://www.dropbox.com/s/whhrmajlhs52pvp/201503101509.pdf?dl=0

Signifiers and Detailed Storyline

Abstract

Ustrina is a 3D platformer game where you control a spiritual fire character and struggle to survive by either eliminating the enemies or collecting items such as wood, orb or tree trunk. The main objective in the game is to reach Volcano, who was supposed to be dead for centuries, but now she calls the player to herself. Her intention is unknown but that’s what player will figure out through the journey. 

Storyline

Level I (Meeting Ustrina)

The game begins in medias res, it opens with dramatic action and the player finds himself in the endpoint of the game. Player starts a fight with a Boss enemy and learns two basic mechanics of the game:

- Controls for movement

- Throwing fire

In this section no matter how much damage player gets, he remains in the third state. There are no UI elements neither. This is for preventing any interruption of flow (immersion) and offer a rewarding experience to players. After defeating the enemy, player has a brief conversation with Ustrina and at some specific point in the level (when he is closer to the hole), the level ends and shifts back to initial beginning point, which is Cave.

Level 2 (Cave: Tutorial Level)

The level starts with a short cutscene. We see a tribe member who wears a particular mask and he is worshipping around the campfire. There is a background story for this tribe member. He is a part of a peaceful tribe where doing anything with fire is actually forbidden. Yet this person is a traitor and worships to Ustrina secretly and the cave is his hidden place.

Then he succeeds to create the spiritual fire and he runs away afterwards. The cutscene ends at this point and fades out to player perspective. 

Here, the player starts in the zero level of health bar (IDEA: maybe the health bar starts to appear when player collects the first wood?). This level of health is only visible in this point of the game, to depict that he is new-born and he is weak. However, when he grabs his first wood he passes to first state (LOW). Through out this level, player learns how LOW and MEDIUM state works. Player also learns the signifiers for checkpoints and target objective (Balloon).

(TODO: Cave painting, location of wood piles, UI, subtitles and decoration of the level. UI Health bar is depicted with 8 steps)

Level 3 (Spring Theme)

Signifiers:

- Fountain: Fountain throws player into air and causes some damage to player

- Water Mills: Player needs to jump over the buckets in the right time while trying to avoid touching water. 

- Turtles: Unlike stones, they sink into water when you stay over them so you need to immediately jump right after.
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- Enemy types: Range attack-only

Level 4 (Rocky Theme)

In this level, player has the option to follow two different paths. They can either choose to jump over floating islands, or they can prefer to stick on ground. No matter which path they choose, they always need to avoid touching water, including waterfalls coming from floating islands. 

Signifiers:

- Floating island as moving platforms

- Waterfall

- Bridges (with timer): Some islands are connected to each other with wooden bridges and they start to burn when you stay too much on them. So player needs to pass across quickly before the bridge collapses. 

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- Enemy types: Melee attack-only

Level 5 (Winter Theme)

Signifiers:

- Wind: Technically, this is the most challenging obstacle in the game. This one is also triggered when player is in certain location and in order to avoid wind, player needs to hide inside some small cave-ish places. Wind can extinguish you or throw you off from the edge of a cliff.

- Falling cliff (signified with cracks): The ground on the mountain is not steady so player needs to pay attention constantly to the ground. In some parts of the level, there are falling cliffs initiated by specific triggers.

- Gaps: Some small gaps that player can jump over easily. 

- Walk around huge cracks: Sometimes the gaps on path are so huge that it is impossible for the player to jump over. So, that’s when small caves come in. Players can use these caves to walk around huge cracks and continue their path.

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- Enemy types: Range attack-only

Level 6 (Ending)

To be announced…

Press Pitch

Description

   Ustrina is a 3D platformer game where you control a spiritual fire character and struggle to survive by either eliminating the enemies or collecting items such as wood, orb or tree trunk. The main objective in the game is to reach Volcano, who was supposed to be dead for centuries, but now she calls the player to herself. Her intention is unknown but that’s what player will figure out through the journey. 

History 

   In October 2014, a group of university students from IT University of Copenhagen with diverse cultural background decided to create psychoanalytic thriller game called Somnium. This year we formed our group again to create Ustrina. Initially started as six people, we are now four members in our team and doing our best to release our game before deadline.

Features

• Play as a lively spiritual fire to discover its backstory and immerse yourself in an intriguing universe

• Explore Ustrina’s compelling story and her mysterious intentions

• Destroy, smash and burn the environment

• Stylish and aesthetic low-poly world with different themes

• Experience Ustrina’s gameplay with different control inputs, including X360, DualShock4 and Keyboard in Windows/Mac/Linux. They can be remapped to any configuration player wants.

Team Logo

Ustrina Animation Implementations

First Prototypes