▶️ During my time working at Gunzilla, I was the location owner for multiple locations. Creating locations from pre-production, blockout to final quality. As the location owner, I guarantee the design principles, playable + fun aspect for the player and delegated JIRA tasks along my teammates who helped me out with building the locations.

▶️ Create modular building blocks and early level design kits

▶️ I had the opportunity to personally mentor a junior level designer in the team, who recently got promoted to intermediate level designer.

▶️ Created Blender Workshops for other level designers in my team to improve on their 3d modeling skills, allowing them to be more confident and block out levels faster using tools and modifiers.

As a senior level designer, I led the LD team on Stork City and worked together along side other level designers and artists on other locations like, Little Kyiv, Early Prototyping stages of Midtown Harbor and a few unannounced locations.

▶️ As the location progressed, I took over ownership of the location. I had a small team of level designers and a group of 4-6 artists working on the location. As we all worked closely with each other, we were all aligned on the vision for the location.

This allowed us to make confident decisions that would ultimately lead to the creation of an unique location with a strong identity that's loved by players. It got compared to Fortnite's "Tilted Towers". Next to that, iteration and weekly playtests of the location were the reasons why we were able to complete this location within a short timeframe. When designers and artists playtest their work, they will immediately understand the impact their work has on the players. It always fills me with joy when they play their work, see an issue and pro-actively fix it before someone even gets the chance to report it.

Level designers get to understand aspects that makes it look aesthetically pleasing and Artists get to understand aspects that makes it play well. Both will need to understand each others work and constraints to make the process smooth and efficient.

▶️ I worked closely together with the art director and artists to make sure we both understood the gameplay needs for the player and still have it look great. As we are making a game it needs to play well and look good. I always say, form follows function.

▶️ My tasks included, macro design, micro design, cover pass, flow improvement pass, conducting research and playtests. Giving feedback to both level designers and artists. Majority of buildings you see in Stork were designed by me, except for the monorail station, the warehouse on the left side and the hospital.
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▶️ While working on Off the Grid, as one of the few level designers with knowledge on modular kits and Blender. I made a small modular kit that we could use to quickly create a variety of buildings based on common metrics.

For Stork City, I worked together with 3-4 level designers and we all used the kit I made for the early building blockouts of Stork City. I kept the amount of pieces intentionally low to allow designers to focus on volume and space instead of details. I call this the macro blockout stage. After the designers finish the macro blockout, thats when additional set dressing and tweaks are made to make it better.

▶️ I also mentored the level design team in Blender and taught them how to utilize a modeling program like "Blender" to quickly visualize their ideas. As a designer, one of the most rewarding feeling is when you are able to visualize and execute your ideas as you envisioned them.
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▶️ While improving the gameplay for locations and in between them, you will have to be able to envision how different type of players will run through your world. Every player got a different playstyle and will react differently based on the situation.

As designers we cannot control each player individually but we can make a design to influence their decision making by for example making it clear to the player what type of space they are in and what playstyle would be best. In a battle royale players get funneled based on the infamous "circle of death" and potentially also by objectives like a "bounty hunt".

▶️ As a level designer we can control this even more by clarifying the gameplay intentions within our levels. Through funneling, variation in contrast and density of loot, cover and vertical elements.

Short ranged players will want to avoid open spaces and would hug closer to cover assets, snaking their way through the area. Snipers on the other hand would prefer an area where they can have a nice uninterrupted line of sight. In "Off the Grid'' cyberlimbs will overwrite how conventional players will play the game. As an example, with the road runner legs, short ranged players are now able to run across open fields to close the distance on long ranged players and give them a fighting chance. On the flip side, snipers can place traps within closed areas to control the flow of enemies.

The addition of cyber limbs and the variety of different modifications make the gameplay interesting.

▶️ Preferably most flow should be in a circular uninterrupted flow. You can almost say that standing still in our game means you are an easy target for players to pick off. With that in mind, we avoid placing assets in the path of the player, false calls and dead ends.

▶️ When working in a team, communication is important. As level designers we don't design in isolation and always need to consider the constraints from other teams. Knowing for example "art pipelines" will help you understand what is possible within a certain timeframe. Making sure your designs don't give other departments a heart attack because of the complexity of the designs.

As I have experienced the pipelines in production before on other projects, I was able to gauge task cost and complexity. While on the project, in rare occasions I would branch of from level design and help prototyping art and tech related elements in the world. From adjusting blueprint scripts, creating placeholder blockouts, basic rigging, animating to things like helping others understand game design and player psychology. Being open minded, willing to polish, learn new skills and connect with others is one of my core believes in improving as a designer.
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More info soon...