Whats next ? Level Designer, what ?

I decided today to try and create a 'project' over the next weeks/months that will answer the questions:

• What is a level designer?


• What do you need to become one?


• What do you do on a daily basis?


• What are you doing throughout game development as an LD? (in detail)


• other questions i think of

i will try to build examples, a light program maybe, sketches, ... to show what i do during a project. if it helps anybody thats great but mostly doing it for me.

ive never really done that before so it might be shit at first, but ill try to take some time to do that in the mist of all the things im actually doing for my own leisure. Hope it will get better as i write it as well.

I will post everything here as they are done.

Obviously i cant really show all the things ive done during those past projects ive worked on since some i couldnt get anything approved to use.

we'll see ;)

Catherine, Portal 2, Little Big Planet 2

I havent played a lot of games recently but those 3 have been the most fascinating ones I found and loved to play for totally different reasons and here's what captured my attention for each of these classic games.

Catherine (japanese version, ps3):
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yeah i dont understand the Japanese language but i really wanted to try this game out so I ordered it from Japan.

The game is divided in 3 really distinct units that could potentially taken apart and made for different art platform.

• The main story is told through an japanese anime, with a lot of expressions, great colors, interesting developments and is telling the story of the main character through his love interests Katherine (his girlfriend), Catherine (girl he meets in a bar and sleeps with) and interaction with his colleague friends at work talking about love and what to do in certain circumstances. incredibly well done, I could understand most of it with that language barrier.


• The interaction in the bar where you move around, talk to your friends and answer back(not sure what i was answering), talk to people in the bar, drink some alcool, play a rapunzel arcade game, receive and send messages to the 2 C/Katherine, watch pictures they send and listen to television news. Wasnt as interesting since i could understand anything


• The nightmare puzzles during your characters sleep which is really where the game takes place. The goal of each puzzle is to get your character on top of an environment made of small boxes. You can move left and right, push/pull boxes which will create a path to go up like a staircase. By pulling/pushing boxes you create a path but you also change the environment that collapses around you and time also destroys the boxes below you. Many different box types (exploding, spikes, slipery, desintegrating,...) help you on your journey to the top and resolve your nightmares. It might seem boring or repetitive if you havent played but adding element of time, surprises, boss fights, etc... make this game one of the best ive ever played. Its never the same, always fun, and can be played in chunks of 15mins if wanted or hours.

ive never been good at puzzle solving or puzzle games which i always find too hard or the answers ridiculous sometimes but this games makes you feel great when you finish a puzzle you been failing a couple of times. it feels you did a mistake when you fail and not that the game tricked you or cheated which makes it so much more edifying when done. Its great and I felt intelligent playing it and finishing it.

Its a long game, funny, new and interesting to watch. Play it when it comes out this summer in north america.

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Portal 2 (PC)

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(might have some spoilers)

following on the steps of the first one it follows the story of the same character(player) and introduce a friendly english robot who will help you out exit the testing facilities...

I enjoyed the first game for its mechanics, puzzles, the dialogue with sarcasm and jokes and the way it was playing the players mind.

The second iteration has more of everything. The dialogue and voice acting is just excellent and so professional. Always making me laugh while I was playing even when the main enemy was toying with me, my mind and the environment/puzzle to try and keep me prisoner and testing its new tricks. Only few games or movies made me laugh out loud as much as Portal 2 did throughout the couple of hours that it lasts. Sarcasm, congratulations (sometimes just to take it back a couple of minutes/seconds later), references from the previous games where you created a lot of damage to the facility and your nemesis and so much more.

Portal knows its a game and toys with the idea quite a lot. For example, you are asked to talk and respond to questions at the very beginning by pressing the 'Space' key which makes you jump and the response is "at least you can jump, it might be helpful". So the game teaches you different mechanics at the beginning but it doesnt feel like a boring training at all since the interaction makes sense and is part of the game.

Throughout the game you will learn and use new mechanics or gameplay elements that you will use to solve the many different puzzle each really unique from each other. The new gameplay elements are a welcomed addition to a game that could potentially feel repetitive if it wasnt for those.

Bits where the main characters were not interacting with me felt a bit boring to me where the only funny things lie on the walls as posters explaining security procedures which are a funny bunch as well.

Great game, now playing coop which is also a blast.

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Little Big Planet 2

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LBP2 wins for best presentation in a game Ive ever seen. From the details of its cinematics that must have taken a long time to do because they had to create all these creatures and effects and move everything slowly and film it with their engine; the story is funny, has a lot of characters, dialog is simple but entertaining, the sets are just amazingly detailed; the mechanics are plentiful where each world/level has a different mechanic that is never used after, is fun but feels that they should have use more of each mechanics instead of switching to a new one directly; make for a diverse and amazing looking game.

The art style that the game uses is his own. It looks great, its fresh, its new, its detailed and impressive, it shows emotions and objectives through cinematics and dialogs. Obviously its not pushing for realism and thats one other thing that is good with this game

Offers the capacity to create so many different types of games. The editor is done to let people create games on their own with more facility than the first one with easy ways to create any type of games that exists out there.

i enjoyed but did not finish it due to some playstation red ring occuring at the time i was playing it.

Wow its been so long ... Now : Kinect

wow its been so long since my last post!!
i guess a lot of time spent at work, shows, trips, playing some games slows me down on my writing time.

anyways lets talk about Kinect a little bit.

So I got a Kinect System for Christmas ... yeah i really wanted one to play games that would come out and it would be so fun to play with this new controller which ive been using my whole life but not in that way anyways. So yes I mean this body of mine.

I had tested this new technology for a couple of months already before wanting it for Christmas and putting it on my list to have. So i knew what could be done with it, its contraints which ive been experimenting for a while at that point and I knew that awesome things could be potentially done with it.

Obviously I got Adventure and Dance Central, the first came with the system and the other one was the best game offered at the time... well it still is ... which is the sad thing about it all.

So Adventure was a day of playing and then shelf time :(
its repetitive, you have to jump (which i believe is not appropriate for everybody for reasons like bad knees for many people, living in an appartment, cant play at night or morning due to noises it makes to land after a jump), its just not really fun unless you are drunk with a lot of people i guess which i havent done yet.

Dance Central is great. Still playing it every other weekend with friends.
Why is it good ? the interface is easy to understand, learning moves for a guy who likes to dance but not so good at it is great fun and testing it in a club setting after gives opportunities for a good laugh, options to slow the motion down and practice with commentary to help out the less fortunate movement wise, good songs, good diversity of moves, learning curve is slow and easy to progress and get a feel for the moves, difficulty modes for each songs provides different moves instead of getting more picky for scores.

of course a couple of things can be better such as the feedback for something you are doing bad colored red but ... and hard to do move and look at whats the next move.

anyways this must be the best game on the Kinect so far.

I was hoping for more games to be released or use the system in diverse ways but so far only mediocre games have come out if any after the original slate of games and those that come out are dancing games which is a shame when companies try to take advantage of whats doing well and trying to make a buck without really going for quality and originality.

I have some hope that some companies will put out proper games and mostly original ones using this tech...waiting to see whats next and also trying the new game from Rez creator Children of Eden.

hope companies put the money out and let the creative people find ways to use the tech to entertain players in new ways.