PRIZE POOL PRODUCTIONS
role:
level designer, lead sound designer
engine:
unity
project duration:
two months
team size:
8
project description:
a colorful, larger-than-life platformer about saving a plushie princess from an evil claw machine. play as the reliable robot Hexdog and enter themed arcade cabinets, avoiding the evil claw's minions and grappling around the toy-filled machines.
Cabinet 2 - Manic Motorways
Cabinet 1 - iDog Coin Pusher
The Hub - "shopDog"
Cabinet 2 - Manic Motorways
Coin Pusher
A coin-filled arcade cabinet with stacks of chips as far as the eye can see. Bright arrows point players to billboards and mechanical scaffolding to shimmy down coins.
The Coin Pusher arcade cabinet is packed to the brim with coins, stacks of chips, playing cards, decorative billboards, and assorted packs of small toys that are placed along a path to the top of the machine. For Hexdog (and the player), however, these become grand obstacles they must prevail over.
responsibilities:
- level design
- level layouts
- whiteboxing
- asset implementation
Level Design
As the introductory level of the game, this level features a wide variety of different platforming situations using select portions of the toy-filled environment. At this point, the player has been acclimated to the basic controls of the game, but has yet to experience the unique cases in which they will use them. Hence, the level features a gentle, but steadily increasing level of challenge as players navigate higher up the cabinet. Playing cards and stacks of chips were used in tandem with mechanical platforms to create a playable environment that also made logistical sense to someone actually playing on the machine.
I started with a rough sketch of the basic layout of the level, and later turned that into a 2d level layout. The final version of the layout included unique level aids and obstacles, enemy placements, checkpoints, and a key for distance reference. After the first iteration of the layout, I created a blockout that focused on establishing a relative size and feel for the level, as well as getting a sense for the player's full movement capabilities. Finally, I gradually converted the blockout into a polished level as art assets were received and implemented into the engine.
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