Team
6 members
Engine
Unity
Strong point
Blockout level
Playtesting adaptation
Game concept
Role
Level Designer
Game Designer
Context
During my second year at ICAN Lille, we developed a prototype of a physics-based puzzle game over the course of five months. The main idea was inspired by a game concept I had created around Terry Pratchett’s novel Death and What Comes Next, though the project evolved a lot during development. In this project, I learned a great deal about communication within a team as one of the lead designers, and especially about how to share a vision in a way that everyone could understand and agree upon.
My Work
At the start of the project, even before we had a playable prototype, I had the idea of using Minecraft as a level design tool. For 2D platformers, I was used to working with grids (like Excel), and I wanted to adapt this approach to 3D. Minecraft allowed me to define clear metrics such as “the player can jump up to 4 blocks high and 3 blocks long” while building a first visual representation of the game using the diversity of Minecraft blocks.
In this project, Antoine Vermesse and I were responsible for the game design and the all the phases of the level design within the game. I mainly focused on player onboarding, since the game had systemic gameplay. I also took care of placing and integrating all the assets in-game. Below you’ll see my process. All the sketches and work I share on this page are my part of the project.
Sketches of level puzzles
Down below is a Level Design Document I was in charge of. Its purpose was to map out our reflections on player onboarding and how we introduced the core mechanics, how the learning curve was structured, and how the challenges varied in both appearance and difficulty.
Level Design Document
The player embodies a Mycobiote, a small mushroom creature who has just been born into this world. He learns to walk, jump, and use his environment to progress on his journey before encountering his “Mother.” The gameplay is systemic, allowing interactions to emerge naturally from the mechanics.
Start of the game
I also learned the hard way that relying only on words makes it very difficult for a team to share exactly the same vision. After countless meetings, I finally understood the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” through the drawings I made. Once I presented them, everything became clear for everyone. Since then, whenever I need to explain something that could be even slightly ambiguous, I sketch it out — and communication instantly becomes much easier.
blockout tutorial
blockout hub
Testing of the tutorial I made
Stupid little details I love to had (You can throw or equip the tutorial stone)
Layout and critical path
The game’s progression was built around upgrades that the player could equip as a hat to navigate levels in their own way. The main mechanic we managed to integrate was the sticky mushroom : a power that let players apply a texture to objects, causing them to attach to the first surface they touched. This could be used to activate switches or create makeshift bridges. We had planned additional power-ups, but due to technical challenges and time constraints, we cut the extra content and focused entirely on polishing this one mechanic.
Walkthrough of the start of the game