Mixing parkour with a third-person parkour hero shooter. Blow up in style.

Game Overview

• Parkour hero shooter, Unreal
• High mobility, fast paced action
• PLAY THE GAME (WINDOWS)

Work Overview

• My job: Level Designer
• Create exciting gameplay spaces that utilize the game’s unique hypermobility.
• Remake levels that did not live up to this promise.
• Iterate on this process based on playtest feedback.
• Work with game design team on parkour integration.

Project Details

My first task on this project was to remake a map that had issues and did not play according to the gameplay philosophy. Instead of utilizing parkour, it was just an open zone where players were shot from all angles with barely any cover. I approached this remake by first discussing with the team what goals we want for this map. The end result are the following goals:

• Allow for more controlled gunfights
• Player should feel rewarded for using the game’s mobility mechanics
• Create medium-long sightlines
• Create spaces where players can just have FUN with their parkour abilities

I started with a simple blockout using the original as the foundation. After some playtests and iterations, I felt that the section was in a good spot and could safely be extended. Added cave areas that would be focussed on enabling BulletVille’s mobility options such as wall-running and the grapplehook. Players now had a space that was tailored made to use all mobility options to their fullest; swinging unlimitedly on the cave’s ceiling, wallrunning on all walls and grinding the edges of sharp rocks across the cave. The caves also provided lots of combined modes of combat. Snipers and rockets could be shot from high vantage points, whereas the rock formations facilitate close-quarter combat.

As each individual cave area was taking shape, we saw it as a good opportunity to engage the community in the process by holding a Level Design Contest to create the third smaller cave section. The winner had its design implemented by me.

Next up was the task to rework Frozen Post, a map that felt too cramped for the game’s mobility. I again started by figuring out what worked and what didn’t with the old map. The minimum requirement I was given was that the game needed two castles instead of one. Using that as the map’s foundation I set out on the following goals:

• Create both long-range and close-quarters gameplay sections
• Reward high-skilled gameplay
• Free up space within the castle, to prevent camera issues
• Create spaces for FUN that highlight the hypermobility

I opened up the inside of the castle and to prevent camera issues and allow for less chaotic gunfights where you don’t know where the enemy is. While throughout the map I focussed on fun by adding secret passageways if the player utilized their parkour mobilities well, the biggest star here is the middle section. This was a large body of frozen water, that could only be traversed if the player utilized their parkour abilities well. Players could now swing from sentry tower to sentry tower, feeling like Spiderman as they times their grapplinghook perfectly. Players responded extremely positive and had a create time doing trickshots and falling to their death. For those that weren’t skilled enough, there was a somewhat hidden teleporter on each castle that took you to the enemy’s closest sentry tower. Parkouring over the water like Spiderman was always fast, thus rewarding skilled players.

During development we felt the need for our players to have something to do while waiting for new updates from us. We wanted to make a game mode that players could enjoy by themselves, and also create community engagement from it. I settled on a linear parkour training map, inspired by CoD Blackops 3’s FREERUN and Titanfall 2’s Pilot Training.

We would record the time it took players to get to reach the finishline and how many times they died in a run. Besides being a fun game mode to brag about in Discord channels, it would also serve as a training ground for new players. Each section had a focus on one or more mobility mechanics, teaching players how they worked as they played.

Created in: Unreal