Freedom-Bound

Role: Team Leader, Level Designer
Duration: November - December 2024 (8 weeks)
Engine: Unreal Engine 5.4.4

Freedom-Bound is a 3D sci-fi RPG that I developed with a team of ten designers, artists, and programmers over the course of eight weeks. Each of us created a pitch document for a game idea we wanted to make, and my idea, Freedom-bound, received the most votes. Since the concept originated from my pitch, I became the team leader. In addition to level designing for the project, this meant I also worked on managing project scope, assigning member tasks through software like Trello, and scheduling/leading team meetings and conversations.

The game begins in a post-apocalyptic world that is being taken over by rogue AI, where the player character is transformed into a cyborg against their will. The player starts the game in a prison, and must find a way to escape, and discover the mystery of why they retain their free will.

Goals:

Lead a team of developers to conceptualize, integrate, and design a 3D RPG game while managing member tasks and maintaining project scope.
Create strong design documentation that includes a game design document and top-down map.
Hit each weekly milestone and deliver a fully playable game prototype with polished mechanics and art.
Write a strong and compelling narrative for the game to follow.

Project Roles

Designed and blocked out the prison starting zone, the layout of the world, and the military base zone.
Created level scripts for item pickups, main quest progression, and cinematics using Unreal Sequencer.
Worked closely with the 3D environment artists to establish level geometry and replace blockouts with finished art.

Level Designer

Team Leader

Led the team in meetings and Discord discussions.
Assigned group member tasks and organized week-by-week asset and project progress through Trello.
Managed and maintained project scope.
Worked on time management and efficiency when it came to completing tasks in a timely manner.

The Design Process

The design process started with team members submitting game pitch documents and voting on our favorites. My idea received the most votes, so I became the team leader and organizer for the project.

Pitch Document

I pitched a sci-fi 3D RPG game where the player is transformed into a cyborg and has to fight their way out of a rogue AI prison.
Inspired by RPG games like The Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Baldur's Gate 3.
Included elements such as NPC interactions, a skill tree, quest progression, and combat.

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After the game was selected, the five designers on the team spent the following week brainstorming ideas and completing a 20-page game design document that served as the project's primary design guide.

Game Mechanics

Talking to NPCs: The player can talk to NPCs by pressing 'E' near them which can give dialogue lines or be used to start new quests.
Completing Quests: The player has to complete a series of main quests to complete the game. The world was designed with open world principles, allowing the player to complete the main quest line at their own pace.
Basic Combat: The combat remained intentionally simple to keep the project within scope, but players can fight enemy robots and humans by aiming down sights and using a shotgun. Ammo can also be found around the area to replenish ammo.
- Crouching: The player can also crouch to sneak into confined spaces or sneak past enemies.
Skill Tree: The player can level up by completing quests and killing enemies. Skill points are spent on the skill tree system where the player can unlock new abilities.
Abilities: The player has several notable abilities, including a self-shield, a grappling hook, and wall-running.

Top-Down Map

I drew up the top-down map for the team and the game, taking in feedback, suggestions, and cool ideas from my other team members. I added locations that would be important to the game's narrative, starting from a prison break and ending with a final battle at the robot military base. I structured the level with six major locations, with each designer assigned responsibility for one location. I was responsible for two of them, the prison and the military base.

Story Narrative

The story was an important element of the game, so I worked with another team member to develop the major narrative details. The locations I created in the game are all directly tied to the lore we created and the quests we designed.

Synopsis: The world is being taken over by rogue AI with a hive-mind collective known as the Sentinels. The player is taken hostage and transformed into a cyborg against their will. Normally, human cyborgs get taken under control of the hivemind intelligence, being slaves to its will. However, the player doesn't have this happen. With their free will intact, they work on escaping the prison and finding the cyborg resistance, others who also retain their free will. The player goes on a journey to discover why they are different, gathers allies, and lays siege to the active Sentinel military base in the region to end the game.

Scripting

We had a primary scripter on the project, but I assisted when their workload became too demanding. I created many of the level events, all story cinematics including dialogue and other effects, as well as the crouch system and quest event triggers.

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Alpha Build Versus Final Build

The screenshots below compare our alpha build with the final build of the military base and prison facility locations that I worked on. Due to scope constraints, I had to remove many of the interior rooms originally planned for the military base. I was still able to make the building look large on the outside but minimized the interior playing space to be much simpler and scaled down. We also had to reuse art assets from the prison for the military base due to scope and time making them appear similar.