This is our first draft of the level design made by Lexi.
This is a good representation of Highgate Cemetery in the game, capturing its real-life appearance. However, since our project is a walking and exploration game, having a purely circular design may result in a bland and repetitive gameplay experience, potentially causing players to lose interest.
Therefore, Ria and I have been brainstorming ways to enhance the fun and engagement in the navigation aspect, ensuring it offers more than just walking.
I got inspiration from a motion design video about Chefchaouen, but unfortunately, due to technical limitations, I cannot share the original video here.
In the video, there was a flowing liquid in a narrow alleyway, giving me a sense of a spiral staircase. This got me thinking that our experience could potentially have three layers, featuring a large spiral staircase with an artist’s house on each level.
What we need
- Hut – where is the starting point
- Path – for artists(NPCs) & player walking
- 3 Artist Rooms – finding and returning objects
- Lear’s Room – checking clues
Based on the images generated by Midjourney, I made a simple prototype in C4D. I am thinking instead of using a main spiral, it’s better to play around the levels and add some different navigation mechanisms in it to level up interest.
But it’s hard to fit our hut and Lear’s room in these three layers, so Ria came up with an idea that puts them in the middle and makes them two layers or mirrored.
Ria came up with the Möbius idea, and I created two prototypes in C4D to present our ideas to Ana and Hermon, as we are unsure which one is more suitable for our project.
They suggested conducting user testing and determining the better option based on comfort and comprehension.
Additionally, Ana helped us in drafting the questionnaire for user testing.
Then I made Simple Spiral in Unity and add three navigation mechanisms.
During my test, I found it hard to climb a curved ladder, so I replace the ladder with rocks.
