BloodSong (2022-2023)
This is a third person music-oriented action game that I have been developing under Three Owls in A Trenchcoat. I was given the task of making a level that was more interior based and be themed towards metal. I started by going through an idea prosses of what looks “metal”. After trial and error, I decided to make use of gothic architecture. I then started sketching out a level on my whiteboard and a mood board.
I made this sketch based on our original idea that this was going to be a kind of dungeon crawler and at the end of each level there would be a mini boss. I also made some areas have and optional room that a player could explore through and find loot.
The idea was that this was a ancient temple from long ago, where you would traverse though rubles and have a intricate interior with many pathways. but after a review it was changed to cutting out the exterior and it being the castle where the player and queen reside and the level will take place though the backrooms of the castle where you will find a tunnel that leads you to the next level. Now during the set dressing phase there was going to be a kitchen but then we all realized that fire doesn’t really work underwater and had time constraints, I set dressed the level to be a sort of storage rooms. I had to communicate a lot with our artists for some custom models.
The original concept for this area was when the player enters this area, there would me some statues both broken and unbroken on the edges of the doorway playing instruments and singing. This was revised to meet the updated game pitch and game flow
With the updated game pitch. My level was going to be the first level and have a tutorial section. This area is more open to let the player get a better feel of the controls.
Since I was tasked with making this level the backrooms of the castle, I decided to make this area a kind of "storage closet" since this part of the level is small
Originally this area was going to be another part of the tutorial where it would continue teaching the player the controls and combat, it was gonna have a broken staircase and have intricate art on the walls to help with storytelling. But we scraped it.
After 2 revisions, this area was changed to be descending rather than ascending. And this area would still serve the same purpose of teaching the player. This was also changed to be a temporary storage area to move stuff into the bigger room
This part of the level. The original idea I had for this area that this are would be a kind of culty chuch area where people come to worship the queen. But with the idea was changed to keep with the idea of backrooms.
I started of with making this area be the sewer part of the castle, but me and my team realized that might not work right, due to this taking place underwater, so I decided to make this be the main storage area where the castle keeps all the goods.
I wanted this area to originally be an area where it would be all intricate and have story elements. But after i was asked to make it more "metal" and simplified. So I decided to have the tunnel entrance inside of a giant fishes skull. The team loved it.
For the post mortem I would have to say that I have learned a lot about working with a large scale team with specialties. But with this you must communicate with one another, there are many ways of doing this even if ones social skills are not the best. If communication is kept solid, there wont be any hiccups and development will move smoothly. (STAY TUNED FOR UPDATES TO THIS PAGE)
