Lords of the Fallen
Role: Level Designer
Description: Lords of the Fallen(2023) is a reboot of the 2014 game, an ARPG Soulslike game, where two worlds are combine in one and the player has to jump between them in order to traverse the world and fulfill their mission.
(April 2023- June 2024)
A little bit of context hehe
I landed in Lords of the Fallen(Lotf) when it was its last months before launch. So we all know what it means.
We were at the late production cycles, this meant that I needed to adapt fast and I was expected that I should deliver tasks asap due to the tight times, I managed to do it doing reverse engineering in the systems that we had at that moment, also the people were really wonderful and tried to explained me different things with the little time wad . Also as fun fact I had just finished launching another game so it was a back to back launch process which wasn't an easy situation to adapt.
Responsibilities
Since I landed in the last months, almost every area had been designed already, so my job was more in to make those playable and to feel challenging and engaging, communicating with all the other areas.
It was my first time in this kind of process which this I mean it was my first time being handed an already designed level, thought at the beginning I thought this could be less rewarding than designing a whole level from scratch. I quickly found how much I can learnt based on previous designers that were working here and to be honest it was wonderful.
I tried to be careful as much as possible to preserve also the design intention from previous designers especially since the level was already approved, only stepping in and modifying layouts when I was recognizing some areas that needed some sugar.
- Level Design
- I redesigned some areas in last stretch of the development. So I needed to be fast getting in the pipeline of the studio.
- Destructibles, another task I received was to populate the world/levels with them, when doing this I was being careful as possible to enhance an already designed space to make sense of them and also support the encounters and loots, since that is one of the main reasons of having destructibles in a souls game.
- Loot Design
- The loot is important in souls game, so the process was a constant back and forth conversation also with the RPG team, to also preserve the balance of the game, having in mind the two worlds, Axiom and Umbral.
- I was in charge of the loot and destructibles, meaning that for loot I was in constant talking with the Narrative and Art team to give it proper enviro storytelling depending on the importance and where would I placed them.
- Encounter Design
- Designed different type of encounters as well as some choreographies so makes sense in the world.
- Using the tools that we had at the moment
- Additional tasks
- Supporting cinematics, supporting quest team, creating tools.
Some Gameplay thoughts
When designing encounters, one of things I noticed was the need of the different options to make the encounters more varied and engaging. So after different talks and proposals with the programming team we reach an agreement and I was set free to use the tools that we had at the moment to their maximum extent. Would be nice to explain some design process behind encounters but can’t so here a video for you.