"Little Red" Project
This is a semester long project focusing on implementing unique levels with engaging encounters, and assigning quests to the player over the course of the runtime.
The story of "Little Red Riding Hood" was used as a blueprint for the narrative and quests for the project
Role: Level, Encounter & Quest Design
Project Status: SEPT 2025 - Ongoing
Tools Used: Unreal Engine for Fornite, Excalidraw
Layout & Planning
- Drew level layouts with planned encounters, triggered events, and player interactions. These layouts are not to scale, but more of a mental reference of where certain elements should be, and how the level should flow.
- Created an encounter flow map detailing the number of enemies, non-combat events, etc.
- Worked on a Level Design Document detailing individual encounters, enemies involved, and length.
Implementation
There were many delicate aspects to this project that required me to dedicate separate work sessions to them. Like setting up cinematics, level blockouts, landscape shifting, making quests, etc). These tasks were required to be done in a specific order to allow for premature playtesting.
Level Blockout
Thanks to UEFN's excellent landscaping tools, sculpting the level blockout was relatively easy.
- Implemented level block out with appropriate props and structures
- Set up basics for encounters that expand and evolve as the level progresses
- Add appropriate VFX, sound effects and other set dressing to enhance environmental storytelling
Encounter Design
I mainly utilized the Expansion/Evolution Methodology for designing the encounters (as I do for all my projects).
This involves establishing an encounter ideology by introducing an enemy or an environmental challenge, and building on it throughout the course of the level by either adding another variable that the player has to deal with alongside the regular encounter (Expansion), or simply increasing the volume/size of the encounter (evolution)
For instance, here I have introduced the player to two guard enemies in the beginning section of this level. They are fairly easy to beat and have forgiving accuracy.
As the player progresses through the later section, they are introduced to a more difficult guard with a less forgiving accuracy.
Since this enemy follows the same logic and behavior as the previous one, but deals more damage, makes this encounter an expansion of the last one.
Cinematics
One of the requirements for this projects was to build a few cinematics that followed a specific set of scripts, which we're provided to us in the assignment rubric. These cinematics were supposed to convey the dialogue naturally, primarily using medium-shot to establish dialogue and close ups to point out character motives.
While these cinematics we're fairly simple to execute, there were a lot of moving parts to them, which compelled me to get to them AFTER I was done with my blockout and encounter set ups.
Conclusion
Overall, this project has been very beneficial towards building my skills as a Level and Encounter designer, but has also given me some experience with building quests for the player, alongside constructing cinematics. I plan to utilize almost all of these skills for every project I work on hence forth.