The Fall and Rais
Dying Light Developer Tools // Dying Light
Level Design, Layout & Flow, Verticality
Level Summary
“The Fall and Rais” is a single-player custom map for the Dying Light base game. After a daring escape from one of Rais’ warehouses into the nearby sewers, the player must make their way up Rais’ under-construction tower, planting explosives while avoiding zombies & Rais’ Men. With all three charges in place and clusters of Rais’ Men all around, Crane must leap from the skyscraper and escape before it explodes.
This level was completed following rapid iterative development practices. Level parameters include:
Interior and exterior spaces
Minimum one quest and one sub-quest
Gameplay that enhances and expands upon the core Dying Light experience
Design Goals
Flow State
Create a well-paced flow that always helped the player forward
Scope
Strove to be perfectly in-scope throughout this development cycle
Verticality
Use verticality creatively to defy expectations & built excitement
Implementation Details
Flow State
One of the best things about Dying Light is the freerunning, and with good level design, players can have very satisfying traversal through the world. I strove to have a consistent flow state throughout the whole level with smooth lines and appropriate “push and pull” moments so the player was always in motion.
An important part of crafting this flow state come through conveyance: the player always had to know their goal with adequate time to adjust their routes. For Dying Light in particular, I used a lot of motion & dynamic elements combined with intentional bits of colour to really “pop” against the grey/beige colour pallete of the game.
Verticality
Who doesn’t love jumping off tall things in games? As part of building up a flow state, I used a lot of verticality throughout the level to help give the player a sense of tension and release. This level was built around the idea of parkouring up a space before making a daring jump to a section lower than where you started. Playing with verticality this way challenged expectations just enough to give players the sensation of riding a roller coaster and having their stomachs left behind.
Scope
In this development process, I challenged myself to do the hardest thing in game development: stay in scope. Particularly as I was directing a team of 23 developers and pursuing my master’s thesis, I had to be extremely smart about the time I had available to deliver a solid, polished level. Through careful planning and working effectively, I was able to hit all of my milestones while avoiding feature creep.
Design Process & Iteration
After playing through Dying Light and completing several action blocks exploring various mechanics, I was ready to start designing. I submitted an LDD to my stakeholder for approval, proposing a level built around simple but effective flow & satisfying parkour.
Longer Lines & Evening Out Curves
After my first deliverable, I spent some time iterating on my middle sewer section. I felt like this section was too short and cramped to really give players a chance to “stretch their legs”, so I slightly lengthened the tunnel system with plenty of straightaways and gentle curves.
In this same vein, I found that my goal of a smooth, circular, ascending flow in the middle rooms was again too crowded to feel good. I moved the troublesome enemy to be less inhibitive and again lengthened the parkour lines, resulting in a much better flow without changing the actual architecture too much.
Conveyance
Perhaps my most important iteration came with conveyance. While players generally always had a good sense of where to go, I was originally counting on players to use their objective markers to plant their explosives. However, I found that I needed to have more diegetic conveyance that fit the style of the game. For Dying Light, this meant motion and colour, with some good uses of framing to position players towards their goal.
Visual Polish
Another hallmark of Dying Light is its great visual capabilities. I knew I wanted to highlight this in my level, and I worked to take great advantage of my aesthetics milestone. In addition to detailing all of the spaces that players interact with to create a space that felt “alive” (is that a thing for zombie games?), I worked hard to create a unique & pretty vista to provide the backdrop for the level.
Post-Mortem
What Went Well
Scope
Ultimately, this level ended up being very well-scoped. By being smart about risks, I was able to have an always-stable level throughout development
Conveyance
After a bit of iteration – particularly focusing on motion & colour – I found that players had a good sense of where to go even without using objective markers
What Went Wrong
Enemy Pacing
While I intentionally did not build this level around combat (rather using enemies as a way to push players where I want them to go), I feel I could have used my enemies more effectively. In particular, I attempted to use the combination of Rais’ men & zombies fighting throughout the end of the level to increase the tension and chaos, but this moment didn’t quite land as intended.
What I Learned
Lines & Pacing
I originally underestimated the space required to really build up a nice flow state in a movement-heavy game like Dying Light. I now have a much better instinct for when to give players opportunities to run forward, how gentle or steep to make curves, and generally how to design a space to create a nice flow state.
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