Legend of the Outlaw Mage

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Project Overview

Engine: Unreal 4

Team Size: 19 (3 Level Designers)

Development Time: 5 Months

As Lead Level Designer of a team of three level designers and eighteen developers in total, my main responsibility was organizing the level designers and making sure all design aligned with the game director’s vision. I communicated across disciplines, created spreadsheets and other design documents, and oversaw all planning in the level design department. Additionally, I was the narrative designer, tasked with creating the world of the game, developing Charlotte’s personality, and writing all dialogue and tutorial prompts.

Roles and Responsibilities

• Acted as lead level designer for the project, organizing and overseeing three level designers.

• Created design documentation including game balancing spreadsheets, spell planning, and general progression.

• Acted as the narrative designer for the game, writing all dialogue and tutorial hints.

• Designed the tutorial level including recording and implementing all videos to help teach players the mechanics of the game.

Lead Level Designer

As Lead Level Designer, my main task was communicating the team’s needs to the designers and keeping the design of Outlaw Mage aligned with our game director’s vision.

My early work as Lead Level Designer focused on determining what systems we would use in our game and how to balance them in a way that was fun. Early on, I created multiple spreadsheets and documents that my level designers and I used in order to keep all of our ideas organized. We shared these with all members of the team and encouraged the other disciplines to add ideas as well for the level designers to discuss. After all, everyone has good ideas - not just level designers.

At the end of pre-production, a member of the level design team left the project, leaving only myself and one level designer. My priority then became to both keep all documentation updated in case we were able to secure a second designer and clear any blockers my level designer had so he could be as productive and successful as possible. I oversaw his paper designs, communicated with the game director to make sure they fit the vision of the game, and worked with art and programmers to brainstorm different ways we could increase the efficiency of the design pipeline. Luckily we were able to secure a second designer about half-way through the project, but the time spent making sure our pipeline was efficient and rock-solid paid off.

As production increased, I constantly updated the Level Design Document on the Game Design Document wiki to ensure everyone had the most up-to-date information. I acted as the liaison of the design department to the other disciplines and worked with them to help keep the game fun. I also communicated concerns and adjustments for the level designers to make based on feedback from both playtesters and the game director.

One of my passions is telling stories and helping to make characters’ stories come to life. In Outlaw Mage, I acted as the narrative designer, helping to create and design the world of Charlotte, her backstory, and her unique voice. Since our team was small, I had to portray Charlotte’s personality and history without hurting the pacing of the action of the game.

I accomplished this through dialogue at key moments, such as the wanted poster at the beginning of the game, and through Charlotte finding items dropped by the members of her gang. This allowed to show Charlotte’s personality, motivations, and her past without slowing down the fast-paced nature of the game overall.

Responsibilities as Narrative Designer:

• Planned the world of Outlaw Mage including some background history, ETC not seen in the game.

• Developed the main character Charlotte’s personality and backstory with input from the game director.

• Wrote around 126 unique lines of dialogue.

• Implemented all voice lines in engine using tables in Unreal Engine.

• Directed the voice actress of Charlotte Kathryn Taylor Rose in a two hour voice over session.

• Reviewed all recordings, chose take to use in final game, and implemented in engine.

• Acted as main editor for Legend of the Outlaw Mage narrative trailer.

After my experience working in other games, I knew that a good tutorial that taught the player how to use our mechanics and let them test them out in a relatively safe space was a must. Early in development, I brainstormed with my game director on how we could make a tutorial that felt fun that helped all players to be successful in our game.

By the end of the tutorial, I wanted the player to know:

• How to use their gun, how their gun is useful, and how the gun combo works.

• The dash mechanic and how it is used to avoid enemy attacks and traps.

• What the style meter was, how to get style, and how to unleash an ultimate attack.

• The basics of their spell gauntlet and how to get new spells.

• The player cannot progress to the next room until they have cleared all enemies.

• The purpose of campfires at certain locations and how to change out their spells.

• The most common enemy types in the game and how the interact with each other.

• What lost items are and their purpose in the game.

With these goals in mind, I designed a series of small rooms that would teach the player 1-2 mechanics per room. These also gave me a chance to add dialogue to help demonstrate some of Charlotte’s personality as she stumbled upon some of the new enemy types and hazards of the world.

A major source of inspiration for the style of the UI and menus of Outlaw Mage came from the game director’s experience playing Persona 5 Strikers so I drew inspiration from how the game does their tutorials when implementing them for Outlaw Mage.

Charlotte makes a comment about the thing the player is about to be taught and then a pop-up explaining the basic controls appear. Unlike Persona 5, we chose to use a video showing the action on screen. I felt this helped to convey how the action in game should look so players would know when they did the action successfully. I did the same thing for whenever Charlotte picked up a new spell - a video would play of the basic spell before swiping to Charlotte using it against enemies. This way, players always knew what their spell did as soon as they got it. Playtesters loved the videos in the tutorials, and it helped onboard them to our game quickly so they could have fun and start feeling like a badass sooner.

Just like in Snowpainters, I have hidden a fox in the world of Outlaw Mage for people to find. And similar to Snowpainters, I hid it in the level I was the most involved in designing. Can you find it when you play through the game? :)

What Went Well?

• We published! Shortly after starting the project, our team lost our second level designer, leaving us in a crunch. Morale was low at the beginning, but we worked through it. We communicated, we trusted each other, and in the end, we were able to publish again.

• The Tier System - Being down a level designer at the beginning ended up being a real blessing in disguise. For every feature we planned, level we designed, or art asset we requested, we created a tier system of what that would mean. Tier 1 was minimal viable product - what will it take to be implemented at its most basic that we would feel would fit the quality of the game? Then what is Tier 2, Tier 3, ETC. Because we planned so well and thought through every design and decision, our game came out so much stronger as a result.

• Great Team Atmosphere - Once production began in earnest in August, the lead team worked hard to create a positive, open atmosphere in the studio. All ideas were heard, and we always communicated honestly with our team about why things could or could not be implemented. This open communication paid in dividends as the project went on, and our studio was always full of laughter and people dedicated to making our game the best it could be.

What Went Wrong?

• Slight pipelines/informing issues - Since our team was so open and communicative, sometimes developers discussed and implemented things without discussing with their leads, leading to some misunderstandings and surprises on major features and bugs. They were ironed out quickly but caused some moments of high stress.

Even Better If/What I Learned

• Following Pipelines - While it was great the developers all worked together so well, it would have been better if we had made it clearer that all major decisions should be run by the leads before implementing in game if for no other reason but to prevent surprises.

• Bug Hunting - Late in development we began to find more and more major bugs. We as a team should have set aside more time to do intense QA work so that those bugs could have been found quicker. In the end, we were able to squash them, but it caused much stress at the end of the project.

• How to Lead - As a teacher, I was the leader of my classroom, but being a lead in a game development team is a whole different beast. Communicating with my level designers, making sure everything is updated at all times, and being thorough in my instructions is a must. I feel I have grown a lot from my time as a lead level designer on Outlaw Mage, and I look forward to what else I’ll learn as I continue as this path.