Third Person Climbing Village Level
This level was made in the Unity game engine and took much inspiration from the Uncharted series from Naughty Dog. I wanted to create a level that utilized space vertically with a climbing system I purchased from the asset store Climbing System by Dias Games. This starting area features a wreckage starting area. A lot of the Uncharted games use these huge cinematic set pieces in the form of vehicle chaces and climbing challenges so I wanted to illustrate how I could visualize previous events in the level to tie a expierence the player has together visually. The area is a run down and deserted village somewhere is a foriegn country. I wanted to tightly pack smaller buildings together to give a more claustrophobic feeling to the area and to encourage players to climb up and around buildings instead of staying on the ground.
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The River
The river section was the next part of the level I wanted to focus on. The rubble around the starting area needed to interact with the environment so I decided to make a simple water material using URP (Universal Render Pipeline) Shaders. Once I added some of the junk objects to close the ends of the river it only made sense to put some platform objects (could be crates) in the water so the player can use the climbing system to jump across the river to the other side. I also wanted to put a additional secret path on the other end of the river that the player could climb back around to the other side and have another opportunity to get any collectables or items they missed.
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Combat Area
The combat area is important because almost every action / adventure game has an area to allow the player to participate in some combat and the over all layout of this section needed to be much more symmetrical to layout points where the player can shoot and be shot from. The most challenging part of this section was designing an area without a proper combat system in place. With that said I did my best to add walls and boxes the player could hide behind and take cover and tried to incorporate some verticality to the area but make it easy enough that players wouldn't have to think about climbing but climbing up to a platform fast.
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The Church
The church area was a fun little section to work on because it was the first big spacious area in the level so getting the spacing inside was critical but also designing the climbable edges needed to feel not so close together and playing the level there are some edges that really do make you feel you are about to miss the grab but the system does recognize the edge and you hold onto it. I am sure it is a small bug with the system but with enough polish you could make certain edges either fall or move to make the player feel like they had a close call and I love making a layout that feels challenging and thrilling. I wanted the player to climb up to a high point so that is why I decided on a church. I wanted to make sure the climbing in the church was totally optional though and at the end the player could pick up a collectable or item if they get through it. You can exit the door at the botton floor at anytime which I wanted people to be aware of so I added a subtle spotlight going through the door to give the sense of a way out in a what would be considered huge and dark building.
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Rooftops
The rooftop area was another climbing section that I wanted to player to navigate but this time was a direct challenge the player would have to get through but I opened up several paths so the player could have a choice of how to approach which direction to go with. One path does allow the player to get a collectable though. Another collectable could also be in the building that is accessible through the main path of this section. The idea is that the drop is too far down so everytime the player missing a ledge or jumps off and doesn't grab anything the player restarts to the checkpoint that would be set either at the start of in the church.