A few years ago, I came across a charming little game called Blue Fire. It basically combined some of my favorite parts of Hollow Knight & A Hat in Time into a really great soulslike 3D platformer, and lucky for me, they came out with a level editor. So while I'm still in between jobs, I thought what better way to stretch my level design legs than with my own custom level for the game!
As a quick note, I'm gonna be keeping this blog post a little short, with just the basic process and final thoughts on making it. Most of the info on the level itself should be covered in the documentation below.
The Process
I started out with how I usually make a level for a game; pick out a feature or ability, and build the level around teaching the player how to use it. From there, we make our 2D sketches. Ordinarily, I do this via Illustrator, but this time around, I decided to go with Figma. This was a tool I discovered while I was working at Epic, and managed to pick up pretty easily. And now that I'm able make personal project again, I wanted to show off my skills with it.
From there, we put the level together in the editor, do some testing, and finally put together all the documentation for it. I'll let the documents speak for that aspect though, so if you wanna check it out, here it is.
Final Thoughts
I think the editor was a little tricky to get the hang of, but only because it felt more designed to be used with a controller. On the whole, I was pretty happy with how it came out. I felt the platforming challenges really highlighted the feature I chose, and progressed the difficulty pretty well. And on top of that, I got to make some pretty solid documentation for it. I definitely brought over some doc writing skills I picked up at Harmonix, so it was really great to showcase that as well. And don't worry, I'm planning to make some more levels for a couple other games, so I think I'll be able to showcase that more as well. Stay tuned, and if you have Blue Fire: Void Maker for yourself, come check out "Grimm's Rage."
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