Changeling
Employer: Xana Ad Hoc Studios
Role: Level Designer
Changeling is a virtual reality mystery game. I was a part of the project in late 2020 as a designer and a developer. In Changeling, you play as Aurelia, a dream-walker who can enter the minds of those she touches. You are tasked with aiding a family by figuring out what is wrong with their child. As you walk through the minds of each of the family members, you find yourself wandering through the surreal worlds within their minds.
A large part of my work on Changeling was as a level designer. I worked to create tutorials for the game, both explicit and more subtle ones. In making these tutorials, I had to consider what a player would experience their first time playing this game, what they would see, and what they would be drawn towards. It took careful thought and a few attempts to make sure that that the player knew both how to play the level they were on, and where to go in it at all times. Much of this was accomplished through the use of lighting, color, or strategically framing certain objects and locations such that the player would notice them.
The other way I contributed to the level design was in generating new ideas for level and grayboxing them. During my time on the project we began work on the father’s level. I would create ideas for the level that would help us convey the themes and emotions we were looking for in the level while ensuring that the level was still fun an enjoyable to play through. Once we got past initial ideas and began working on refining ideas and seeing what worked, I spent time grayboxing levels for their layout and implementing the minimum features of the required mechanics. With the mechanics and the graybox it was possible to test the level early on and quickly to ensure we weren’t veering way off path.