Snowman’s Revenge
Engine: Unity
Roles: Level Design & Audio Implementation
Awards: Best Final Project - Vancouver Film School
Snowman’s Revenge was my final project at Vancouver Film School. It was developed by a team of 5 over the course of 4 months. I was the team's level designer and implemented the game's audio.
Game Summary
Snowman's Revenge is a single-player, third-person, reverse horror shooter where you play as a Snowman rampaging through a Christmas town trapped in a snow globe. The player attacks hordes of townsfolk and destroys parts of the environment by throwing snow taken directly from the Snowman’s body and using special abilities. The snowman shrinks in size when it attacks or takes damage, and grows larger when collecting snow or frozen body parts from the ground. The player makes their way through the town with the objective of destroying the town’s Christmas Tree.
My design process for this project was:
Gather references
Create 2D layouts
Write documentation
Build a White Box
While doing this, I am always making sure that I am iterating downstream, meaning that when I am making new versions of my 2D layout I am also gathering references, and when I am iterating on my white box, I am updating my documentation to reflect the changes. This allows me to work in the fastest stage of development for as long as possible.
Not only does creating and maintaining what is created in each of these steps aid the level’s design, but it also helps me communicate that design to the rest of the team.
References:
Just like 2D layouts and level design documents, I like to treat my PureRef as a living document. As I build and iterate on my level I am constantly finding new references as I encounter new problems.
2D Layout:
My process for creating 2D layouts will usually start with line diagrams (traces of the critical and optional paths that mark down the different gameplay beats that the player encounters as they progress) followed by rough sketches made with pen and paper. From there, I take what I’ve learned and turn it into a more formal 2D layout in Photoshop or Illustrator. Working through these steps over and over allows me to iterate on my design very quickly.
Documentation:
The level design documents that I create typically contain a brief overview, a mission walkthrough touching on each beat, a 2D layout, a beat chart, an ingredients list, and a flowchart. For Snowman’s Revenge I decided to exclude the flowchart since we were building a fairly linear game.
When I create beat charts I always chart both difficulty and intensity for each beat. I feel that it is important to do this as the two can lead to very different experiences and players can be rewarded or fatigued by both.
White Box:
Since Snowman’s Revenge was built from the ground up, we knew we needed to have a playable game as quickly as possible so that we could start testing our design. After creating the initial version, a huge number of iterations came not only to the level but gameplay as well. This meant that the two were constantly influencing each other.
Screenshot of an early version of the level
