Zombies in Venice

Introduction

This project was the last one of the level design formation I did at CGMA with Shane Canning. I had two weeks to create a level on Unreal Engine 5 and I chose to create a project inspired by zombies games like Left 4 Dead 2.

Pitch

The zombie apocalypse has just started in Venice, and the army failed to stop it and will leave the city with the survivors.
You are an ex-cop; your goal is to reach the Basilica, the last safe place in the city, where the army evacuates survivors.

Creative process

First version

Problems:

The hord sequences are too straightforward
The lack of obstacles during the boat sequence makes it pointless

Solutions:

The hordes sequences are longer with more objectives (the firestation hord starts earlier, and I added the defense sequence in the Basilica)
To keep the intentions of the boat sequence, but make it more interesting, I focused on staging by adding setpieces (page 20)

Second version

Problems:

The Basilica’s hord sequence layout doesn’t allow the player to easily wander and dodge the hord (ground floor)
The guidance to the crane terminal in the fire station is confusing

Solutions:

I flatten the altar platform, remove barriers and add barrels to guide the player to pillars and create a funnel effect for zombies (page 23)
I moved the enemies and barrels near the terminal and removed some enemies on the second path to attract the player’s view and not confuse him with zombies at too many positions

Overview

This level is divided into three parts:

The roofs: Onboarding and tutorials
The fire station + the canal: Restitution of what has been learned
The basilica: The climax

Roofs

The goal of this part is to teach three things:

The narration: I display the goals by text in 3D so the player can always see them and be guided by them
The exploration: By putting resources on and outside the golden path
The shoot: The first zombie is easy to kill because the player is safe. The two other zombies create a little surprise and let the player learn their behaviour.

The barrel is a very important element in this level. To introduce it, I separated the sequence into three parts:

The vista zone: From this point, the player can see the barrel and the zombies in the reinforcements zone.
The fight zone: This is the zone with the first wave of zombies, with the barrel in the center
The reinforcement zone: To give the impression of a big group of enemies without letting the player be submerged, I separated the enemies into two groups so they don’t arrive at the same time.

Until now, the player has always had a vista/safe zone to anticipate the danger. Here, two walls

block the view and hide zombies. So the player has to move inside the fight zone to kill them, and can be surprised by the zombies behind the other wall.

Fire station

After multiple fights, it’s time to lower the pacing. To do that, I put a cinematic that teases the big fights incoming and pushes the player to explore and collect resources.

This is the first fight where the player is not the hunter; he is overwhelmed by the number of zombies that increase continuously, and his only solution is to escape.

To escape, he must lower the crane and take the boat. So to guide him through the sequence, the golden path makes a U. He sees the boat first,

then the zombie horde, and finally the crane’s terminal.

Barrels and zombies are near the terminal to attract his attention and help him clear this area. Finally, from the terminal, he can see the boat

being released and can take him.

The second path, has less zombies but it’s more difficult to reach and longer to go to the terminal so more zombies can arrive.

Canal

After the fire station sequence where the player was a prey, he retakes the control during the canal sequence. It’s a reward; he can kill as many zombies as he can without a lot of danger.

Because the player must feel in control, the sequence has to be fluent. That’s why the zombies' positions precede the boat's direction change.

(The boat will turn to the left, so the previous zombies are on the left).

A few setpieces come to add a bit of life and epicness to this sequence (zombies jump on the boat, attack policemen, the boat makes a jump on a bridge)

Basilica

The basilica has two phase:

Rest/Resupply: To slow the pace, I put a rest sequence. During this sequence, the player will learn his new objective (being evacuated by helicopter). He can also explore the basilica to find resources, watch where the barrels are, and find the exit.
Hord: Another infinite horde starts; the player has to take the ladder to escape. He can use the pillars to create a funnel effect and use the barrels to explode zombies.

Once the player uses the ladder and pushes the button, the final hord arrives.
Contrary to the previous hordes, where the player has to escape, here he has to defend a place. This difference in dynamics helps to avoid the feeling of repetitiveness.

To give the feeling of a hord coming to the player, without having a too difficult sequence, the three spawn points have different roles:

Spawn point n°1: Lots of enemies appear from here, they give the feeling of the hord but they take a lot of time to arrive to the player.

Spawn point n°2: This spawn point has the same goal as the n°1 with less zombies. Having this second spawn point makes the horde more organic.

Spawn point n°3: Only a few enemies spawn here, but their proximity to the ladder and the player makes them very dangerous. Their role is to break the repetitivity of watching the two other spawn points by creating jolts when they spawn.