My Process

I am the lead of both the world and narrative teams for SoulSync City. This game was originally envisioned to have a completely open world with objectives that would progressively activate across the city, and the player would be timed to reach each marked destination before the city retaliated by sending enemies to fight them. I pitched a formula we called the “A > B > A > B” system to visualize this, where the player would start in the A section, the parkour challenge, before they reached their destination. Each destination would trigger a B section, where the player would fight a large group of enemies before being given a new target to run for in the next A section. However, due to software issues keeping the team from being able to work on the world at the same time, I split the map into 3 main levels, each with its own A section and B section. Eventually, the gameplay shifted away from parkour to focus more on combat. At first, I divided each level into zones that would trigger a combat event. However, it became increasingly clear that our new trajectory needed a linear level design, and I plan to, in the future, divide up each section of the map to be a themed set of linear levels.

I am also in charge of the game’s tutorial. I took advantage of the small space of the level as much as possible by creating winding pathways that naturally led players towards sections I wanted them to interact with. At first, I decided to limit the player’s capacities to just their base movement set and gun as to not overwhelm them, then when into a more detail tutorial of the complicated special tools later in a controlled environment. This way, the learning was spread out and the player was less likely to be distracted by all their controls.