Starship Troopers: Extermination
Starship Troopers: Extermination is a first-person co-op shooter where players fight for control of alien planets.
Released on: PC, Xbox Series X/S, PS5
Engine: Unreal Engine 5
I worked as a level designer on this project, shipping five maps and 41 missions across five different game modes. Additionally, I created the game's 'First-Time User Experience' and helped build our level creation pipeline.
Promotional Dev Diary - Boreas
16 Player Level - Boreas
Responsibilities: Level Design
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In the game's story, players are part of the first wave of soldiers landing on this frozen planet.
Boreas was the first level used in our “Galactic Front,” a limited time event where players join Companies to complete community driven goals and earn rewards. Every hour, six different missions are available on Boreas with a range of objectives and difficulties. To support this, I created ten missions across three different game modes for this level. All of the missions needed to play well on easy, medium, and hard difficulties while accommodating all of our “Mutators”—changes to gameplay such as enemy ambushes, unique player abilities, enemy stat modifiers, and more.
After players complete the Galactic Front, Boreas will be added to the regular level rotation.
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For me, the goal of game design is to evoke emotions in players. These emotions can incentivize player behaviours, or enhance their enjoyment of the game.
In levels, you generally evoke emotions through experiences—either the player does something, or something happens to them.
In linear levels, you can plot out these experiences on a timeline. However, in more open levels like Boreas, you need to accommodate players moving through the level in various ways.
Because of this, I treated each experience as a node connected to other nodes around it. From there, I planned missions that move players through these nodes. Once I had mapped out the level on paper, I quickly blocked it in and began testing and iterating.
When testing, I focused on 3 things:
Does the experience deliver the correct emotion?
Does the experience fit in this section of the level?
Are there ways to strengthen that experience?
This approach allowed me to create a large number of missions quickly, as I wasn’t building each mission in isolation.
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The biggest challenge we faced for this level was development time. Boreas had the shortest development cycle of all our 16-player levels, which meant we were on an extremely tight art budget. We also wanted to convey the feeling that players were touching down on a planet, not just a single level. This meant two of my primary goals were to create a sense of scale and a variety of spaces for players to explore.
To keep art scope low, I focused on creating varied environments using shape rather than distinct art assets. This allowed us to create icy plateaus, massive ice fissures, and narrow caves with very few pieces.
To convey the scale of the level, I utilized verticality by creating imposing structures that loom over the player. I didn’t want these areas to be strictly visual, so I ensured players could navigate many of them from top to bottom.
Hive Hunt Game Mode Trailer
4 Player Levels - Bug Hives
Responsibilities: Level Design, Set Dressing
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My first task at Offworld was to build levels for the game mode “Hive Hunt.” Hive Hunt is a 4-player, timed game mode that drops players into large cave systems with the goal of destroying nests of bug eggs. Players must race against the clock since they fail the mission if it takes longer than 20 minutes to complete
The objective of this game mode was to create a streamlined experience with a clear objective and route. We relied heavily on modular assets to speed up production and create compelling player experiences with a small team.
These levels were a great experience because I had ownership of both the gameplay and the visuals, allowing me to work on them from initial concept all the way to shipped product.
During the development of the game I created 4 cave levels featuring a total of 6 Hive Hunt missions (shown below).
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We needed to create a large number of highly replayable missions quickly. So when creating the geometry, I used our modular assets to build several 100-meter by 100-meter cave tiles. Each tile could be rotated into 4 different positions to create variety.
I then used these tiles to link together bespoke sections of levels that served as climaxes. Afterward, I revisited the tiles to add additional variations on top of the existing geometry.
It was important to vary enemy spawns in each playthrough while ensuring that the pacing of the level felt consistent. I accomplished this by creating three spawn tables that ranged in difficulty. Each spawn table contained several different encounters, randomly selecting one when triggered. Additionally, I mixed in spawners with fixed tables to ensure that certain moments occurred each time.
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The development timeline for these levels was quite short, with some having only 2 weeks before they needed to ship. Because of this, I was very focused on using development time intelligently.
I found that I needed to focus on selling a fantasy. Each key moment had to reinforce the theme of the level, whether it was traveling through lava filled caves or touching down on a frozen planet.
Agni Cave Map 1:
When creating the first Agni cave map, I pulled a lot of inspiration from Khazad-dûm in The Lord of the Rings. I found that I could use underlighting from the lava to create a foreboding feeling as players neared key moments of the level. This gives the level a great sense of unease, making players feel like they aren’t supposed to be there.
Agni Cave Map 2:
In this map we wanted to use elevation to create a play space completely different than the others found in our game. To do this, I decided to create a level where players spend the majority of their time descending down narrow ramps in a massive chasm, which gives the level a great sense of scale.
This created unique gameplay opportunities since we could take ranged enemies called “Inferno Bugs” and spawn them below the player. These enemies fire in a long arc that fills an area with fire when it hits. Doing this created sections of the level where the player needed to quickly push through a wave of enemies before the ramps they were on would fill with fire.
Agni Cave Map 3:
In the third Agni cave map, I wanted to try to vary the environments players traveled through as much as possible. In all of the other Agni maps, we used lava to add light to dark sections. For this map, I decided that a lot of the light should come from crystals. This gives the map a more fantastical feel which helped vary the players’ experience.
Boreas Hive:
Heading into our 1.0 launch, we needed to deliver 3 Hive Hunt missions on the planet Boreas. With timelines being as tight as they were, I didn’t feel like I could design, build, and set dress 3 separate levels. To solve this, I decided to build one large level and have players take different paths through it. Some missions would start where others ended, and others would cross over each other. This allowed me to pack the same amount of content into a much smaller space, saving time on set dressing.
On top of this, players would find themselves walking past familiar level landmarks, making it easy for them to orientate themselves in the space.
Promotional Dev Diary - Single Player
Single Player Levels - S.O.G.
Responsibilities: Level Design, Set Dressing
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I acted as the sole level designer for our game’s first time user experience, a collection of single player missions titled “The Special Operations Group” (S.O.G.). The goal of these missions is to teach the player key parts of the game, and give them a head start on leveling some of their classes so they have an easier time jumping into multiplayer.
In total, there are 25 missions that introduce different enemy types and objectives. Because of time constraints we decided to build them in our cave levels (the same ones used for our 4 player mode “Hive Hunt”). This meant that I didn’t need to build as much geometry from scratch, and the confined space allowed me to create a more linear, tailored experience.
A high point for me was working with Casper Van Dien, the actor from the original movies who voiced his character for these missions.
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Our single-player game mode had several design constraints. It needed to be 25 missions long, follow a set story, and be built within 4 weeks. I was fortunate to work with a talented sound designer and 3 incredible programmers during this time.
To accomplish this, we took a very collaborative approach. I broke this game mode down into a feature list, then presented this list to the other team members, explaining the design intent. From there, we discussed the best approach to create each feature and explored whether there were more effective ways to achieve the same goals. We would constantly adjust our work around each other as new information arose, making the whole process feel very cooperative.
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Similar to what I mentioned above, tight timelines governed a lot of the decision making on this feature. This meant it was important not to be prescriptive with my design. Instead, I explained what the need was, and then worked with the team to figure out the best way for each need to be met in the time that we had.
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