Ecosystem
My Job: Level Designer, 3D Modeler, Community Manager
Formation: Gamagora
Ecosystem is a student project created in 3 months with Unity by a team of 17 people.
It’s a management and exploration game. The player is a robot, its mission is to develop a village with respect for nature. You will explore the world to find resources and make Cornelian choices to develop your village.
Each of your choices has an impact the ecosystem:
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Destroy forests and the animals will migrate
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Build coal power plants and the temperature will increase
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Dry out lakes and the surrounding forests will die out
Level Design
During the pre-production, we defined in 4 zones:
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The tutorial: On the south, it explains how to play, like the prelude plateau in Zelda breath Of The Wild, it’s a Montessori area, meaning that the player can test each mechanics at his own pace and without danger. When he feels ready, he can follow the main objective and open the gates that open to the rest of the game.
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The plain: the main area, it is designed to be easy to terraform to host people. There are few hills that used to break the line of sight. And break the redundancy. The ruins of an ancient civilization can be found here.
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The mountain: it’s the farming area with big forests and car wrecks. With several plateaus, we can use them as vantage points and discover hidden ruins.
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The savannah: it’s a hot zone used mainly to produce electricity. It’s here that we find the endothermic power plant that produces a lot of electricity at the cost of the temperature going down in a large area.
The design of the mountain area
In consultation with the design team, the mountain area is defined as:
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Plenty of resources
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Focus to explore wild area
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We can find the nuclear power plant
The level is divided in 4 areas
The Lake
The main entrance of the mountain, it is used as a hub :
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Introduction to the local fauna
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lots of wood resources
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The biggest lake of the game brings a lot of water, but completely dries out the area if overexploited.
Paths are displayed using two tricks:
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The valleys’ V shapes to highlight paths
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The arrangement of trees to create paths.
The main plateau
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It hosts the nuclear power plant, the biggest power plant of the game, it’s hard and difficult to use.
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lots of scrap metal resources
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Vantage points that show the endothermic power plant and the ruins
The high plateau
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The highest point of the level
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It’s a hidden place, the player must explore to discover it
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Vantage points that show a nice view of the dome and the endothermic power plant
The car is placed in a way so that it shows the player the direction.
Re-use of the V-shaped valley system to indicate the entrance to the high plateau.
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Brings a break during the exploration
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Lots of resources
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A panorama of the region and indication of the ruins.
The verdant plateau
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The old city is aligned with the mountain to highlight the importance of the place
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The mountain and ruins are two landmarks to help the player to not get lost
The area is designed as a three-part walkway
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The first is used to discover the map and grab resources used to progress in the story.
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The second part is about resolving puzzles to discover and reactivate the nuclear plant
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The last one is not mandatory; it helps the player with resource harvesting in new areas or the discovery of vantage-point
Communication
During the game development, I was in charge of the communication, I created and managed the Facebook and twitter account of the game. I wrote daily tweets and weekly milestones on specialised forums.
I also worked on several project presentations during the year, Whether for the Gamagora Game Show or the Japan Touch Lyon, this brings the opportunity to let people discover the game.
As a communication manager, I was in charge of playtesting during the Japan Touch, I studied and noted the players’ comportments during the tutorial and brought up technical issues to the developers with an organized Google sheet.
