Level Design First Draft

This is the first draft of my level, a fortified village built up around a mill. The player is a key soldier in a play by the rebels to take the village from the Empire for its valuable resources and defensible location.

The player must make their way through longhouses and the mill, fighting enemies, in order to assassinate the enemy mage, lowering the Empires magical protection and leaving the village open to attack.

This was a very quick sketch up of the level. The blue denotes the impassable river, red circles indicate combat events and the yellow circle is the assassination target.

This first draft is very linear and not all that interesting. There are a few optional rooms to engage player interest, but other than that the level is very flat. A small plains village would not be as flat as this, rather it would be built around a valley.

The richer areas around the mill would likely be place on the higher ground, with better defensive walls and ordered buildings. The poorer areas would be a far more ragtag affair, likely situated in a bend in the river as a natural defense for those unable to afford fortifications and walls.

With this in mind, I moved onto a second paper draft.