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Ember Point
Team Size: 10   |   Engine: Unreal Engine 5   |   University Project [Sept 2022 - May 2023]
My Roles: Level Designer, Game Designer, 2D/3D Artist
Steam: Play Now
Itch.io: Download

Ember Point is a combat-focused action game with horror elements. Players play as Gravitus, an ex-soldier who now works for a research organization, and traverse through unsettling environments between enemy encounters. Throughout the journey, Gravitus will discover the disturbing aftermath of a planetary catastrophe, The Overheating, and his organization's research.

My Responsibilities 

Level Design

  • Collaborated with combat and narrative designers to expand and revise the prototype level layout.

  • Greyboxed levels in the UE5.

  • Iterated the level based on playtest feedback and combat changes.

  • Set-dressed the level with environmental assets and appropriate lighting.

  • Documented level changes, art direction, and playtest feedback.​

Art

  • Anchored the art direction and designed the protagonist and environment accordingly.

  • Modeled and textured bespoke assets.

Before Everything ... The Narrative.

Before diving into the design process of visuals and levels, I want to introduce our game's narrative first, for it significantly influences my design decisions.

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In the near future, Earth suffers from increasing global temperatures and radiation that leads to an ecosystem catastrophe: The Overheating. Most humans escape the planet, but those left behind develop a disease called Gradual Hyperthermia from prolonged radiation exposure. This disease induces symptoms such as hallucinations, super strength, uncontrollable rage, and internal heat, which turn all remaining humans on Earth into monsters.

​

Gravitus is an ex-soldier who now works for Katani Industry. He's on a mission to return to Earth and research the possibility of curing Gradual Hyperthermia. But before he can even start his research, he crashlands into an abandoned town that is filled with heated, raging monsters.

Level
Level Design Process

I shifted into the level designer position after the prototype stage and took over a first-pass level done by another level designer in the team. I identified level goals and combat/narrative changes at the beginning of each major development phase. I would then build and revise the level accordingly.

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First Pass: Prototype

Overall Level Goals:

  1. A 5-10 minutes linear experience

  2. Three enemy types and one boss

  3. The game is set in an old town

The prototype level I was handed with

Post-Prototype Iteration

Major combat design changes:

  1. Scaled-down enemy types from four (3 types+1 boss) to three (no boss)​

  2. Scratched the syringe gun; changed to wave gun with two firing modes: wind and bullet

  3. Added a stasis grenade.

 

Level Goals:

  1. Weave the tutorial into the beginning of the level.

    1. ​Use enemy encounter and environment interaction to teach player wave gun mechanics.

  2. Create arenas for combat sequences

    1. Introduce three enemy types in a progressive sequence

    2. Provide a decent amount of anticipatory area between each combat arena

  3. Fill the anticipatory areas with puzzles and narrative beats that are coherent with the world-building

To achieve the design goals, I divided the map into four areas: introduction, town square, train station, and final arena (forest). I expanded each section while keeping the overall route/structure. 

I then worked with the combat and narrative designers to pace each section, giving them gameplay and narrative purposes.

1. Introduction Area: 

  • Basic movements

  • Environmental Interactions

    • Introduce wave gun function 1: push​​​

  • Introduce fodder enemy

    • Melee combat introduction​

  • Combat reinforcement

3. Train Station

  • Reinforce combat and wave gun mechanics with combat and environmental interactions.

  • Introduce enemy type 3: large, aggressive

  • Unlock a door returning to the crash site (optional)

    • Making the level an open-world map

2. Town Square​

  • Puzzle section: find and push four battery packs into their slots

    • Reinforce wave gun function 1: push

  • Introduce leech enemy type: charging towards players at high speed

    • Introduce wave gun function 2: plasma/slow 

4. Final Arena

  • Allow players to exercise everything they have learned and encourage creative play.

I added small transitioning sections in between each area where small narrative beats play out. This, and the combat arenas in each area, create a rhythmic pacing: explore-->combat-->puzzle/explore-->combat. This pattern helps prevent player fatigue, keeps the game fresh, and builds up tensions (like the long hallway between Town Square and Train Station)

​

Introduction area sketches

Level paint over and new overhead screenshot

I did two paint over based on the greybox to help the audio designer on the team to know what kind of environment players are in, therefore creating proper sound. I anchored down our visual reference to an old Czech town. In the game, it's first taken over by medical corporations and then abandoned and occupied by mutated creatures. 

town reference 2.png

Post-Alpha Iteration

Major combat design changes:

  1. 3 enemy types --> 2 enemy types + 1 boss enemy type​

  2. Scratched stasis grenade

​

Level Goals:

  1. Scaling down: delete the forest arena; change the train station into the boss fight arena

  2. Expand the town square puzzle to feature core mechanics: melee slashing and gunplay.

    1. Reinforce shooting enemy weak points through puzzle interactions​

  3. Streamline the slope leading to the indoor area

​

I redesigned the train station from having three levels into one; I then grey-boxed the new station in UE5. I took inspiration from Grand Central and old Soviet train stations. The outside is rough with geometric shapes and concrete, and the interior has an open space with supporting pillars and arches.

 

Since the final enemy type (Vulkan) has several range attacks, leaving enough space for players to move around is essential. The pillars have aesthetics and gameplay functions: when the boss charges into the pillar, it will stun for a while and expose its weak point. This creates combat opportunities for players not used to action games and trains players' spatial awareness. The pillars are one-time use to avoid players abusing this mechanic. I placed four functional pillars with two broken ones on the level, visually indicating this mechanic.

​

The team also changed the breakable doors to fire that can be put out by the wind mode of the gun. This reinforces the mechanic of using wind on fire/heated enemies.

New train station greybox

As a team, we decided to remove the battery-pushing mechanics for the puzzle section for two reasons: 1. it doesn't fit the setting 2. It's way too buggy and hard to fix given the time constraint. Instead, we shifted the puzzle sequence to:

​

  1. Players find the junction boxes that are infested with pustules (the same material as the enemy's weak point) 

  2. Get rid of any obstacles between players and the junction boxes by shooting wind gun or melee slashing

  3. Shoot the pustule with regular bullets

​

The puzzle loop was further simplified to find the junction boxes --> shoot the pustules with bullets --> fumigate any fire blocking the way with wind. This loop reinforces the gun mechanics and our core combat loop: use the wind to fumigate fire (overheated enemies) and then use the bullet to shoot the exposed weak point. We also added cables that will light up after connecting the previous junction box to guide players.

Fire fumigation and pustule shooting demonstration

I helped expanding the puzzle area to really hone in the mechanics. It also helps the puzzle feel more integrated into the game instead of being an "one-off" area.

Puzzle expansion/redesign sketch

I redesigned the slope and the indoor area (the long hallway building). The old version had an abrupt slope and angle that made the reversal feel awkward. I smoothed out the corner angles and streamlined the transition from the puzzle area, to the indoor area, and then to the train station. 

Long hallway with leech enemy 

Post-Beta Iteration

Major combat design changes:

  1. Scratched the interactive pillars in the train station for the boss fight

​

Level Goals:

  1. Set dress the whole level

    1. Add lightings​

  2. Minor level changes

​

At this point, the game is feature-complete. I shifted to set dress the entire level and added appropriate lighting. I deleted the pillars in the train station because we no longer needed them for gameplay; the player should have the entire floor to deal with a highly mobile boss.

​

Since the overall environmental lighting is dark, readability was a big challenge in set dressing. Instead of purely relying on lighting, I brightened the textures: I used lighter colors like white and pale green for the house/train station exteriors. They may look jarring under bright daylight, but these light colors well-meditated the overall darkness here.

Greybox/final comparison

Since players will spend much time in the town square and repeatedly see this area throughout the game, I added a statue in the middle of this open space as the centerpiece. I then added flames around it for dramatic effect. I added some explorable areas and details in the scene to further add to the overarching narrative.

Art
Anchoring the Art

I took some keywords from the narrative to explore some ideas for the game's visuals.

Gravitus, the space researcher --> astronaut but on Earth?

The Overheating --> Mutation, humanoid, heat, hard skin

The end of humanity --> Post-apocalypse, bleak

I then follow these initial ideas and wrote out the art direction document, which includes the visual ideas for Gravitus, the enviornment, the weapons, and the enemies.

Gravitus: Character Concept

Modeled by Finn Connoly

Pick-axe Model

Renders in Substance Painter

Gravitus' melee weapon is a stylized pick-axe. I wanted a weapon with two different uses- a hammer and a blade- that could create more combat variations. Both the hammer and the blade are exaggerated to emphasize each hit and the execution animations visually. Gravitus picks up the weapon from the town he crashlands in, and thus we want the pick-axe to have some industrial look that echoes the town's setting.

Lowpoly model in Maya

I blocked out a low-poly model in Maya based on the concept art and sent the first pass to our combat designer for testing. Based on the combat test, I shrunk the hammer size, elongated the handle, and removed the side hold to give a clearer view of the combat animations. When texturing, I added an emissive part near the hammer's end. It helps players identify the weapon/striking distance in a dark environment. It also serves as a visual "initiator" of the swinging VFX.

In-game shots

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