Escape from Hell

Introduction

"Escape from Hell" is a level made in one month for Steve Lee's level design jam.

The theme I chose is "Escape", and I used the Doom Builder editor to make it.

Intentions

To let the player feel he is escaping, I wanted to push him to explore and find his way through Hell, as well as find weapons to help him.

At the beginning, the player starts with only a gun and faces Demons, a strong enemy that can't be defeated with a gun alone. But just before that, he saw a shotgun, an efficient weapon against the Demons, and taking it was the first goal.

The next rooms can be crossed in any order, and they respect two constraints:

The player can cross the room without fighting
The stuff he gathers is the room is efficient against the present enemies.

The Boss's room is a gatekeeper. The player has to find enough stuff to pass through the room and reach the elevator. If he isn't strong enough, he can go back to the previous room to find more stuff.

Creative process

The first step was to create the documentation and the plans for the level.

The level has a circular structure to let the player explore the level.

To keep control of the pacing of the level. Each room is part of a beat with a different pace than the other.
The more the player progresses toward the Boss room, the higher the pace is.
The rooms in the middle provide a break and the objectives (take the shotgun and find the red card).

Once the blockout was done, I started playtesting it, and several issues happened.

Lots of players were lost in the level and didn't know where to go to finish it.

To correct it, I:

Change textures. One texture = one beat/group of rooms
Make the rooms less symmetrical
Use lights and enemies' positions to guide the player
When he enters a room, the door to the next room is in the frame of the camera.

Another issue was the predictability. The enemies were in open rooms, and the corridors had only stuff. This pattern makes the level predictable and repetitive. To avoid it, I added enemies to the corridors and changed their layout.