David Bishop
Level Designer
The Fabled Lands
Role: Level Designer
Duration: December 2023 (3 weeks)
Engine: Unreal Engine 4.27
The Fabled Lands is a vertical slice of a 3D RPG game set in a fantasy ghost town environment. The goal of the game is for the player to explore, talk to NPC's, gather items, and follow a short quest line to the complete the game. RPG's are my favorite genre so this game was inspired by games like The Witcher series, Red Dead Redemption, The Horizon series, and more.
This RPG game has a linear design structure to keep the project within scope, but I still found opportunities to allow the player to explore and discover items and events that happen outside of the linear narrative path I created.
Goals:
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Design a world for an RPG game that follows a linear narrative path but still allows for meaningful exploration.
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Create strong design documentation that includes a top-down map, asset list, and level walkthrough.
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Create refined scripts for level events, quests, and enemy patrols.
The Design Process
I began the level design workflow by writing a narrative for the game to follow and designed a world inspired by some of my favorite RPG games. In order to keep this project in scope, I decided on implementing the following mechanics: talking to NPCs, picking up items, and basic combat. The narrative completely changed over development of the level, as my original one was too out of scope for this 3 week project. I went with a mysterious night-time ghost town environment that gives an eerie feeling while the player explores the world.
Game Mechanics
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The player can pick up objects and interact with NPC's by pressing 'E' near them.
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The player needs to collect 200 gold from around the level to buy a weapon.
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The player will be killed if they collide with an enemy and they don't have a weapon. If the player has a weapon, the enemy will die.
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To complete the level, the player needs to reach the hermit tower on the hill. To do this, they need to have bought a weapon and given the hermit a tasty offering.
I designed the top-down map for this level using photoshop. I ended up cutting the cave and barbarian encampment sections from the level as they were out of scope for the duration of the project. The village layout was inspired by towns you might find in cowboy games and movies, with a central road down the middle with different buildings on either side. I included a tower on the top of a hill to capture an interesting vista view that the player will path through in order to complete the game.
Once the map was complete I created the level walkthrough. The final product was drastically different due to an out of scope ambitious original idea, resulting in content being cut. In the final product I redesigned the narrative to be simpler, removed multiple areas of the map, and kept NPC dialogue shorter and concise. (Click to enlarge the image on the left)
I white boxed the level using Unreal Engine brushes and static meshes, as well as the landscape tool for the outdoor environment. I detailed the block out to resemble a fantasy or old timey village with primarily wooden structures. The buildings I developed were a starting house, a blacksmith, an inn, and a general store. I also structured the outdoor environment to allow for meaningful exploration in pursuit of finding enough gold to buy a weapon, one of the main goals of the game.
I developed an intro and outro cutscene to the game using Unreal sequencer, and scripted together level events and conditions, and basic patrolling enemy paths using blueprints. An example of one of the blueprints I created is down below.
(Click to enlarge)