Iditarod Run
Project Overview
Engine: Dying Light Developer Tools
Platform: PC
Synopsis: "Iditarod Run" is a single-player quest in Dying Light. It takes place within a small city slice on the outskirts of Harran.
The quest requires the player to enter an overrun city and assault a bandit compound to retrieve life-saving Antizin for a struggling seaside village.
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Key Takeaway: Understanding pacing and how to affect player tension is one essential component to understanding game feel, but only one of many.
Design Goals
Good Game Feel
Modulated Pacing
Encourage Agency
Reference sheet for level creation
Good Game Feel
Understanding what "good game feel" actually entails is a challenge in its own right. However for the purpose of this level and artifact I surmised that any level that had a balanced tension curve throughout the level would approximate to good game feel, or at least insomuch as to what I could adjust within the engine of an existing game.
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Playing through segments of the game itself I isolated segments of gameplay that I felt the game was constructed to compliment. Deconstructing these segments allowed me to get a good idea of where the gameplay of Dying Light felt and worked best.
After nailing down the initial conceit and finding references that I could utilize to build my level I got to work.
Modulated Pacing
As the level progresses it needed to naturally ramp up to tension peaks and fall to valleys to keep players immersed in a "flow" state. Before planning out the spaces, I took all basic player actions in the game and listed them as either being a benefit or deficit to the player. When I started sketching out the rough spaces, I made sure to adjust each space to afford players as many benefits or detriments as needed to modulate the tension.
In order to help prevent players from falling out of a "flow" state, I made sure that each combat encounter was a potential peak for tension, with rest areas in between each one. Because of this, the encounters are constrained on space and limited in supplies, while the rest areas are more open and have supplies all around for players to take time to resupply and explore.
In the examples given, on the right, benefits are highlighted in green and detriments in red. You can see benefits are things that players might subconsciously or consciously be aware of like cover and environmental hazards to throw enemies at. Detriments on the other hand are less obvious to players such as enemies having a height advantage on them, or better sightlines of the their approach to snipe at them with.
Example of benefits and detriments late in the level
Example of affordances and detriments for mid-level
Video showcasing variety of weapon options for players
Example of modulation for player choice early in level
Encourage Agency
A large part of game feel is player agency. A game can feel a lot better if players feel encouraged to be able to play their own way through it. To help encourage this, I designed the first arena that players enter to have multiple pathways through it. Players could take a direct approach and tackle the hordes of zombies head on, or they could circle around and take to the rooftops and use their parkour skills to avoid enemies in a speedy freerun.
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Additionally, in the seaside village player's will find an assortment of different weapons and supplies: a machete, a 2-handed axe, a gun with limited ammo, and throwing knives. I wanted to give players a variety of options to play around with to fit their preference for the combat ahead
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Eventually the player is funneled into more linear encounters with less room for agency, the initial opportunities afforded the player a level of freedom that helped to keep the pacing of the early areas light while still packed with gameplay.
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What Went Well
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Level structure came together quickly
The entire structure of the level came together rather quickly as soon as I got to building it, which allowed me ample time for iteration and polish throughout which paid dividends when it came to testing.
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Effective communication
Throughout the development of the level I communicated effectively with my stakeholder and evaluated feedback to correctly adjust the most critical issues which allowed me to progress smoothly constructing the level. This also helped me to nail down the effective structure for a project concept that was so nebulous from the start.
What Went Wrong
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Research oriented progress
At the outset of the project I wasn't aware all that much what factored into game feel, so as I did more and more research the overall vision of the level changed multiple times. It wasn't until I had set a final point in my schedule to stop researching that I was able to progress with the knowledge I had and made significant gains.
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Game worked against me slightly
The design of the level had to be locked down so that players would follow the intended path through the encounters after the first arena. This lead to some problems as Dying Light endemically wants to be an open world game instead of a more linear combat action game.
