käty
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Echoes of Silence is a third-person narrative game that takes place in 1980s Japan. You play as Yuto who is looking for his friend who went missing during their investigation of the abandoned Kurokawa-cho city district. Using the camera you must unravel the mystery of the place and find out why Yuto and his friend went there in the first place.
15 PEOPLE
Level design, level audio design
UE5
12 weeks
UNIVERSITY PROJECT
itch.io release
overview
my responsibilities
level design
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Created the design and white-box block-out for the whole level
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Created modular kit block-out for MVP area
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Helped to set-dress the MVP area
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Added mission flow into the level using the tool provided by programmers
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Worked with systems and narrative designers to achieve the intended gameplay experience
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In collaboration with a programmer created level events such as breaking and flickering lights
level audio design
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Gathered the audio effects that were required for the game
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Implemented the ambient sound for the level
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Created sound effect events to support the spooky mood of the game
marketing
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Recorded video clips in the engine using a cinematic camera
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Created the teaser for the game
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In collaboration with the marketing strike team, created and edited the trailer of the game
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Created the final logo of the game
project description
Echoes of Silence is a narrative-focused third-person game that introduced some development challenges I had never dealt with. My previous experience with level design included platformer and FPS games which were both high-action and gameplay-focused levels. Thus, I had to learn what it takes to create a level that allows the narrative to shine, meanwhile, keeping the experience interesting and supportive of the game's pillars.
We were given in total of 8 weeks to create the vertical slice of the game. This challenged us in many ways especially in the design, as we had to create a narrative-focused game without having enough time to create an exhaustive narrative system. To solve it, we added some platforming and puzzle elements to make the player experience interesting and thus more enjoyable.
level showcase
project timeline
concepting
level proposal
pre-production
production
release
Playing reference games
Researching the chosen location
Gameplay ideation sketches
Gameplay dynamics investigation
Level layout sketches
Level pillars and one-liners
Player experience (gameplay + narrative)
Amosphere and location
General level flow, key locations and events
Level sketches
Gameplay sketches
Prototype block-out
Level one-pager and documentation
QA, playtesting and iterations
Iterated white-box block-out
Gameplay implementation
Narrative implementation
Modular kit block-out
Sound and light events implementation
Bug fixing
Set-dressing
Marketing
QA and playtesting
Minor iterations
level design
Level one-pager
Level vision
Kurokawa-cho is supposed to be a place where no one has lived for a decade and that has been a place of ghastly events. This was the focus of our narrative and I wanted to communicate it also through my level by making the level immersive and interesting to discover through clever use of architecture, set-dressing, light, and sound.
Level pillars
Illusion of freedom
One of the game's pillars was related to freedom and a semi-open world. As I knew that we wanted to control the flow of players' experience as much as possible, yet make them feel adventurous, I set out to achieve the illusion of freedom in my level.
Exploration
As we went for a Disco Elysium-style narrative game we wanted the player to have the freedom to explore and investigate the location and the narrative at their own pace without too much guidance or restrictions.
Mysterious mood
The keywords of our game were ghosts and Kowloon-style abandoned city district, while designing the level, I tried to make the level architecture, sound, and lights to support the mystery.
Investigation and puzzle
From a gameplay perspective, we focused on puzzle elements and narrative investigation. When creating the level, I had to make both of these work together harmoniously.
Level sections
To aid my designing process I used the method used by level designers working on Assassin's Creed franchise, which is a one-liner method. It works by creating a phrase or sentence that describes what the player should feel in this section/level and then supporting this idea with every design decision made in the level. In addition, using one-liners is a great way to communicate to my team what I want to achieve with the section in a more simple and easily understandable way.
Level play-through
workflow breakdown
sketching
Sketching is a great tool, allowing me to quickly try out my ideas without spending too much time on them. I mainly like to sketch 3D and isometric, however, often I also create to-down maps which help a lot with the general layout of the level.
prototype blockouts
I prefer to make my level prototypes in Blender as I find the workflow there a lot faster than in Unreal Engine, mainly because it provides a lot of freedom and the possibility for rapid iterations. In addition, it's very easy to export it and test it in the engine.
modular kit block out
For this project the next step after the initial blockout was to recreate it in the engine using a modular kit. As we had a tight time schedule, I had to use Environment Artist's modular kit, which was more complicated that I initially thought, however, it saved artists quite a bit of time.
set-dressing
I typically let the artists handle set-dressing, but in student projects where artists are often overworked, I find myself assisting with it. On my one-pagers, I leave notes for environment artists about key focal points in the level and which areas need more detail to enhance the player's experience.
level development
Level events
To help with the mysterious mood, I created a few small events that would contribute to it. I created flickering lights, flickering TVs, and breaking light events with the help of programmers. In addition, I created a falling glass bottle and a leaking gas tube sound effect events, to help make it more spooky.
