Rik Boerma - Level / Game Designer
VIKING HIKING
ROLE
Level Designer
GENRE
3D Platformer
MADE WITH
Unreal Engine 5
Viking Hiking is a small scale, open-world 3D platformer with a unique pole-vaulting mechanic. As Bøf the Viking, the player is tasked with finding enough Rune Stones to open the gate to Valhalla and complete the game.
The game is built on 3 core pillars:
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A playful level, encouraging exploration and playstyle experimentation.
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A fun character that feels good to control, is easy to pick up but with depth to master.
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The horn, which is used for the unique pole vaulting mechanic, providing the game with a USP to stand out.
As a level designer, my responsibilities included:
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Level planning
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Establishing metrics
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Blockouts
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Designing challenges utilizing the player's varied movement options
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Guiding players throughout the level
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Playtesting and iterating
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Encouraging player exploration and experimentation
Challenge Design
Multiple Solutions
Based on our core pillars, I built challenges to be solvable in multiple ways.
Many challenges on the island have an easier solution to ensure that anyone can complete the game, but can also be completed faster if the player makes good use of their toolset. This gives the player a satisfying feeling of mastery and "cheating" game, which was verified by positive player comments during playtests and after release.
Making Traversal Interesting
While blocking the level out, I focused on key places to build challenges and then addressed the connector spaces between the main content areas.
I approached these on a case by case basis, by examining the context of these spaces and the player dynamics we wanted to achieve, to make these spaces more interesting.
Guidance
Breadcrumbing & Challenge Positioning
The Wisp collectibles (the blue flames) were used for breadcrumbing to guide the player around the level.
They often lead to easier challenges first, which then point to a slightly more difficult challenge and so on, allowing me to steer the player.
Vantage Points
Verticality not only lets the player use the pole vaulting mechanic in fun ways, it also gives players vantage points around the level, allowing them to easily spot more Rune Stones and thus set their next destination.
Players commented positively on reaching these places and finding more objectives to pursue.
Breadcrumbing in Challenges
Wisp collectibles were also used to hint at how the player can approach a challenge. Here, an arc of Wisps hints at the player to pole vault over the spiky platform and onto the platform behind it, which also creates a rewarding feeling when players pull this move off.
Landmarks
Landmarks were used throughout the level to help the player orient themselves and to draw them to different points of the level.
The most important landmark is the tall mountain, at the foot of which lies the gate, the player's end goal. As such, the tall mountain is visible from nearly anywhere in the level.
Level Planning
The Map
Guided by our core pillars, the game takes place in a small open world, encouraging playful exploration an giving players plenty of opportunities to experiment with their moveset and approach challenges in different ways,similar to Super Mario Odyssey.
Level Design Matrix
To guide the process of creating challenges, an LD matrix was made, filled with the various abilities of the character and level ingredients. We estimated which moves and level ingredients would work well together and then made challenge prototypes using these combinations, helping us to find a diverse array of fun challenges to populate the level with.
Area Iterations
Planning Shipwreck Cove
This area of the level was my main focus during the inital production phase. It focuses on combinations of horizontal jumps and pole vaults in combination with geysers. After determining the focus of the area, a sketch was made to illustrate the placement of challenges and checkpoints, represented by the grey squares on the map below.
Initial blockout
The overall shape of the area was blocked out and I placed the ships acting as the main landmark for this area in order to draw the player in.
Early versions of challenges
I designed and placed early versions of challenges for this area so that they could quickly be tested and iterated upon.
Final version
Challenges were iterated upon and a large rock was added to act as a vantage point (seen in the top left). I also helped to replace the blockout terrain with a landscape,
Gym
Metrics
To ensure quality and consistency in the level design, a gym level was set up with tests for all kind of metrics, like walkable slopes, gap sizes, level ingredients and jumping and pole vaulting metrics. These metric tests are highlighted in yellow in the gym overview on the left.
Challenges
Using the positively estimated combinations in the decision matrix above, challenge prototypes were also built in the gym. The challenge prototypes are highlighted in blue in the overview on the left.
Overview & Reception
Viking Hiking was released on Steam to very positive reviews and went on to be downloaded over 50,000 times. It was also nominated for the Best Student Game category at the Dutch Game Awards 2023 and the Made With Houdini Award at the Game Development Championships 2023.
RECEPTION
50,000+ downloads
"Very Positive" Reception
- 88 Reviews -
- 90% Positive -
Takeaways
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Level design planning: I learned to take an informative approach to planning my level design through techniques like using a decision matrix.
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Open world level design: As my first open world game, this project taught me a lot about guiding the player, from techniques on a macro level like using landmarks to help players orient themselves, to using micro scale techniques like using breadcrumbing to steer the player to points of interest.
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Designing challenges for multiple approaches: Being an open-world, skill based platformer, I found that it was very important for the game to offer challenges for that can be approached in different ways, in order to reward experimentation with the moveset and give players a sense of mastery of their skills. Meanwhile, I also had to preent the player from breaking the game, requiring a very thorough approach to testing the challenges.
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Unreal Engine 5 & Landscaping: On the technical side of things, I got more familiar with the landscaping tool in UE5 by sculpting parts of the level and also improved my general proficiency in the engine.