Christopher Perry
Game-play and Level Designer
K.O.U.
KnockOut University takes place in an alternate universe where all conflicts are resolved through
brawling. KnockOut University is a prestigious fight-school located in Brawlington, USA, and is home to
some of the best future brawlers on the planet. It's finals week at K.O.U. and Final(s) Fight is about to
commence. Final(s) Fight is a school-wide all-out battle royal and only the last one-hundred students
left-standing graduate. The pressure is on as life-long friends and rising stars Logan and Luci team up to
ensure one of them lands the spot at the top.
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K.O.U.
Level progression was simple and I had a set of rules to follow to assure the player progresses correctly and has the intended game play experience. Block off the areas that couldn't be navigated, bring their attention to areas of interest, and telegraph potential enemy encounters.
Wanted the next goal or checkpoint to be in the vision of the player so they knew what to go for next.
Combat encounters had to be easily recognizable. Since we had traps and weapons that could be interacted with I had to make sure they were easily perceptible and in reach.
Project Role
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Design and construction for 3 unique levels
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Laying out Enemy and trap encounters as well as player progression through documentation
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Cooperated in the technical design for
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Player characters​
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Enemies
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Traps
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Intended Experience & Level Guidelines
The team wanted a fast paced experience that was simple enough to grab the attention of players while having an easy streamline of action. We wanted to have an easy to understand arcade fighter that had a lot of personality, so the levels had to be easily navigable and the enemy encounters had to gradually increase in difficulty while still introducing new and exciting experiences. ​
The game was going to be an arcade fighter/beat em up reminiscent of "Double Dragon" and "Final Fight" we could easily find ourselves with repetitive level design if not careful. This coupled with the fact that our team consisted of 10 people (primarily Designers and Programmers) it proved difficult to find art assets to circumvent this problem. Regardless, I did my best to introduce exciting encounters and new areas for the player to explore.
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Level Design process
Design stage
For every level I design I like to start on pen and pad first. For this project I wrote down a few key words that described the experience I wanted to go for for each level individually, after that I came up with a sketch for each level, denoting certain encounters for traps and enemy spawns along with player progression. Once I took the sketch and cleaned it up in Photoshop I then went to whiteboxing the level.
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Whiteboxing Stage
After getting the go ahead from our creative director I went straight into to engine to get a better idea of the scale and overall player progression. I played with the idea of introducing new rooms with some encounters and mapped out where enemies would be placed.
Polish!
This is the final process, bring all of the assets in and make the magic work. This not only included physical art assets, but lighting, post processing, and decals for the environments.
