Perry’s Pies

Genre: Horror
Platform: PC
Players: 1
Role: Level Designer
Team Size: 12

About the GAME: Perry’s Pies is a first person 3D horror game, where the player attempts to escape a bakery which is haunted by a monster named Perry.

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About my Role: As a Level designer I was tasked with creating 2 levels during this project. The levels I was assigned were the Basement and the Kitchen. My first task was making annotated maps for both levels. Then I took each level 1 by 1 as production requested. I made modular Block-Outs, and ran playtest iterations on them. When Assets were finished being made I implemented them into the levels. Additionally I acted as environmental artist, so all of the props were placed by me as well.

The Basement

About the LEVEL: The basement level was the first level that I made for Perry’s Pies. I was given inspiration from games like Silent Hill, and Resident Evil. By the time it was completed my team was highly enthusiastic with the results, which gave me great motivation moving forward.

Basement Annotated Map

When creating the layout I was considering that the player needs to be able to escape the monster. So on this first level I made 2 major pathway branches. 1 in the first room the player enters, and the next in the north west room. Each room has obstructions such as fallen furniture to slow the monster down. There are several minor branches as well which reward the player with consumable items to use against the monster.

Basement Block-out

This is a video of the Basement level after I completed the Block-out process. As you can see at the start of the video I followed the annotated map that I had made. When I finished making this I presented this video to the rest of my team.

Basement Walkthrough

This is a video of a Walkthrough of the Basement Level when it was near completion. I made it for my design team, to show the placement of all the interactable items (the items that glow). My instruction at this point was to generously distribute these items throughout the level. As you can see in the video most of the modular pieces have been implemented at this stage.

More Basement Screen Shots

The Kitchen

About the LEVEL: The Kitchen was a tricky level. Kitchens are often large rooms with open lines of sight, and the gameplay we are looking for with Perry’s Pies demands it to be more broken up, so I added several rooms throughout the development process to make this level more interesting.

Kitchen Annotated Map

This annotated map went through a few different iterations. When I blocked out the level the first time it was far to congested because I was using kitchen counters to break up the routes. I ended up adding 2 more hallways, because I found that the player would get stuck too easily during playtest. Ultimately it meant that I had to crunch while adding props in the end.

Kitchen Blockout

The first thing that playtests showed in the block-out stage was that the counters added far too much congestion. As I iterated forward I found that adding entire new routes using short hallways yielded the best feedback.

Kitchen Walkthrough

This is a video of a Walkthrough of the Kitchen Level after I added the props into the level. This was toward the end of the development process. I always wish that I could add more, but time is limited. The lighting in the scene took me a while to fix and I kept running into issues with it baking properly, so there are some lighting errors in this video.