I had the opportunity to work on this level during my level design classes during my Master degree in Game Design at I.I.M., Paris, France, under the supervision of Laura Mas Maury, level designer on A Plague Tale.
The level was built in the Far Cry 5 map editor (used for Far Cry Arcade) from Ubisoft in 1 week. I wanted to play with the zombie pack and bring an « horror » vibe to my level. It’s a « Journey » map, the main goal for the player is to reach the exit.
Here is the result. Design intentions and solutions are detailled below the video:
STORY – BACKGROUND OF THE MAP
You incarnate the only survivor of a plane crash after you and your friends were flying during a violent storm, somewhere in the eastern Himalayas. You wake up in the middle of the debris, on top of a mountain on which there is a mysterious temple.
INTENTIONS
I used to play a lot of Far Cry 4 and I was very fan of the Shangri-La phases . They are basically long corridors with a lot of zombie-ish ennemies in an south-east asian themed environment. I wanted to replicate a little bit of that with a thin layer of an horror atmosphere. It translates into various way in my level.
NAVIGATION
The level is divided in 3 parts.
1. The Beginning
The beginning of the level is a very straight foward ‘corridor’ that shrink to the point that the player have to crounch to continue it to the end of the section. It act as a funnel where the player can’t be lost and that isn’t very dangerous, since zombies always comes in front of the player. They are a lot but they never take the player by surprise, making them pretty easy to kill.
At the end, the whole start of the level act as a tutorial for the player to familiarize themselves with the feeling of their shotgun.
2. The Village
The second part of the level is a more open one. A single path is drawn on the ground, in the dirt, but the player is allowed to take the path they want. In example, the player is not forced to directly walk into the villlage, but they can walk around in the forest nearby for a sneakiest approach.
This part comes in contrast with the previous one, to make the player feel that the world they are into is bigger than they thought, but, since every house is in flames, the danger too.
3. The End
All roads leads to the same end, which are two arenas: the bastion and the fort. Everything is more or less closed around the player, and their only chance to survive is to kill every ennemy without dying first.
It creates a focus on this last tension points after a relative freedom in the village.
WORKSHOPS
To create variety and keep the player, I created two workshops:
1. Breakable ground
The player has to shoot the ground at the start of the level, in the temple. I think it creates a cool moment and a certain « Whoah » effect since I had to create it entirely in the engine using test surfaces!
2. Quad
This workshop is a shot of power before the last section of the level. Shooting zombies in the head is fun, but rolling on them with a quad is funnier! It may feel a bit out of place considering the whole level, but it give the player a very interesting reward after several minutes of fights against zombies and a cool incentive to continue to play.
COLORIMETRY
The colorimetry is all dark and white with a huge satured red.
The only elements that stand out are linked to violence : blood, fuel barrel that can explode, explosion themselves, fire, zombies etc.
The red color oppresses the player during their journey.
SHOTGUN
I chose on purpose to give the player a single firearm, a very specific shotgun that can only fire two bullets before reloading. There is no other gun, the player has to stick with it.
I never wanted a very hard level, so I was pretty generous with the munitions. The player has a lot of room to miss their shots on several zombies without being too punished.
Nontheless, the shotgun magazine being limited, it forces the player to reload after almost every shot, making them vulnerable to a potential ennemy assault.
It helps to maintain this layer of pressure on the top of the head of the player that keep them entertained, despite being a killing machine that can one shot almost every zombie.
Clément NOWACKI 