Nick Johnston
Game Design Portfolio
Design Process
Dino Delivery
I worked on Dino Delivery as a level designer and encounter scripter. I guided the player through the first half of the game using puzzles and interactions that helped flesh out the players' skills and understanding of the world.
In order to create a fun and involved gameplay experience, I followed this 6-step process.
This map shows the 4 areas of the game that I designed encounters for. These are:
- The Ridge
- The Riverbank
- The Council
- The Market
I had to consider my design process for each of these areas when designing minor encounters to make the best player experience possible.
1. Pacing, Player Skills, and Intent
Players need to be taught new mechanics at a good pace so that they aren't bored or fatigued.
Once they're taught, mechanics need to be reinforced to ensure the player has mastery and retention.
I design with this in mind before creating anything.
In this example, in the Ridge, the player was very new to the game, so the encounters were enforcing basic mechanics such as movement, interacting with static objects, and using their slingshot to interact with the environment.
2. Map out
Players need to be entertained at regular intervals. Just like how the difficulty of encounters can't be too easy or too difficult, the encounters themselves need to be spaced out so that the player is finding new, interesting encounters with space to breathe.
When mapping out an area, it was important that there was a good blend of both major and minor, plus required and optional, experiences for the player to come across and interact with.
3. Prototype
After mapping out the encounters, I used the project's modular puzzle design tools in Unreal to test out different encounter designs. These tools allowed me to connect props in the environment to tell environmental stories and give the player diegetic puzzles to solve.
For example, this minor encounter in the Council Map was started simply because the area around it was very bare. It's used to enforce the "Stay" or "Go To" commands for Parcel. When Parcel stands on the orange pressure plate, the water spout turns on. This causes the flowers to sprout and give the player a trinket, an optional collectable.
4. Test
After I implemented the prototypes for the encounters, I observe playtesters and take notes on trouble areas and confusion, such as if certain encounters were too difficult or were being passed by playtesters too often.
This puzzle was originally a puzzle involving two ropes that the player would shoot, dropping the letter down from a piece of the wood. The design of the level this area didn't afford this kind of puzzle, however, so it was reworked to involve moving up a piece of debris and shooting the letter down itself.
5. Iterate
Once an encounter is tested, I review the testing notes and incorporate any actionable items or observations into the design.
One of the puzzles in the Ridge, in the left side of this picture, was a trinket above a rope between two houses. The player shoots the rope to collect the trinket below. The prototype for this encounter was difficult to see at first, so before set dressing the houses were moved further away from one another and more negative space was used to call out the trinket's silhouette.
6. Polish
Once an encounter has been tested and iterated on enough that players are routinely finding and enjoying the encounter, the encounter is moved on to a polish state. That's when set dressing can be done around the encounter and sound effects designed specifically for each one.
This video shows a walkthrough of the Ridge map, going through each encounter.
