käty
olup
tomb
raider
inspired
Puzzle
modular kit
As a player, exploring ancient ruins, discovering mysterious locations, and solving interesting puzzles are the things I love about Tomb Raider games. Therefore, I was excited to learn how to create the level ingredients that make the Tomb Raider puzzles so fun to solve.
individual
tech Level
design
UE5
8 weeks
UNIVERSITY PROJECT
overview
project description
In total, I built five puzzle elements: a movable object, a door, a button, a collapsing floor, and a moving platform. All the elements are inspired by different story puzzle ingredients from the Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The elements aren't meant to be used for recreating any certain puzzle but rather give a selection of triggers and events that can be used to make a puzzle similar to those found in the Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
What I did during this project
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Researching and analysing Shadow of The Tomb Raider puzzle design
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Creating flowcharts for each puzzle element and evaluating the implementation difficulty
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Prototyping the puzzle elements
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Creating a demo level and gym
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Designing gameplay beats
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Researched blueprint communication methods
project timeline
research
analysis
pre-production
production
release
Playing reference game
Analysing the puzzles and their elements
Selecting puzzle elements
Analysing the work logic of chosen elements
System sketches and graphs
Researching blueprint communication
Prorotyping
Implementing the systems
Testing and iterations
Demo level
'How-to' documentation
tech level design
DEMO level playthrouhg
During my research into Shadow of the Tomb Raider puzzles, a few level design rules became evident when analyzing the puzzles, which I tried to follow when creating the demo level.
puzzle element set-up demo
In this video, I demonstrate how the puzzle elements can be used in a level since the goal of the project was to make a toolkit that other level designers could use in their levels. As can be seen, the pipeline of setting up the elements is very simple and fast, which is a clear advantage of the kit.
workflow breakdown
research
My research consisted mainly of sketches and paintovers of the puzzles. Since my goal was to learn technical level design with this project, I focused mostly on breaking down how the puzzle elements work in the game rather than studying the player experience.
analysis
I made a choice to include only the most common puzzle elements in my final breakdown since they would have the widest range of applications. I created a flow chart for each element, which helped me think through the implementation logic, so, I could more easily build the elements.
development
As a part of the implementation process, I researched different methods of blueprint communication since it was required to build all the systems. I had very little prior experience with blueprinting at the time, which is why researching this was a perfect learning opportunity for me.
demo level
As the final step of the process, I created small gameplay experiences to demonstrate the application of my toolkit. I created a gameplay experience inspired by the Shadow of the Tomb Raider puzzles.
conclusion
Positive take-aways
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Since it was my first technical level design project, I was very pleased with my learnings from this project. It gave me a basic understanding of what goes into developing level ingredients.
Improvement points
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Looking back at the visual presentation of the ingredients, I would use level prototyping grid texture and color-coding instead of the unrelated and misleading textures I used in the project.
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I would put more effort into building a demo level that would sell the idea better since the current level doesn't capture the essence of a Tomb Raider puzzle, which I could improve on by spending more time designing the level and prototyping different gameplay scenarios in the gym.