Charles Gormley, Game and Level Designer
3rd Floor
2nd Floor
1st Floor
Basement 1
Basement 2
The Big Night
The concept for The Big Night was a simple but very fun one. The idea was you played as a thief that forged an invite to Prince Charming's ball.
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To fulfill that concept it would require a huge and well-guarded space for the player to explore with multiple interlocking spaces and floors, simple but satisfying platforming up and through windows, secret passages, and of course being able to slip back into the safety of the party happening on the first floor and talk with guests.
One of the biggest undertakings of this level was it's size and trying to connect as much of it as possible. Every floor had to have multiple ways in and out for the player, as well as for the guards. These access points for the guards had to meet a tough combination of easy for them to access but difficult for the player. We solved this usually by having a heavy presence of guards at these access points. Not always just standing guard over them but often multiple guards would have patrol routes through these points.
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These heavy guard patrols led to a lot of players getting frustrated as they often tried to take the more direct path. Luckily in this case the theme of the level actually ended up solving this issue.
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Using Prince Charming and Cinderella's movement I could guide the players gaze to not only the outside section of the map that leads to the basement which has multiple ways up into the tighter controlled areas, but it also helped push players to talk to one of the NPC's involved in one of the objectives. Almost every play tester ended up using the basement method to reach the upper floors after Prince Charming and Cinderella were put into the map along with a large opening into the outside with the moonlight guiding them.
This map went through quite a bit of iteration, especially after doing research into castles. Much more natural lighting had to be introduced into the upper floors where royalty was housed while the lower areas with workers ended up being much more sealed off and used unnatural lighting.
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