top of page
Starshot
Role: Level & Narrative Designer
Fling and float your way through a zero-gravity spacecraft in Starshot, a fully hand-tracked VR puzzle game! When systems begin to mysteriously fail, the AI pilot, S.T.E.L.A., accidentally wakes you out of cryo-sleep instead of the lead engineer. You must punch an energy core into power receptors throughout a variety of levels to uncover the true cause behind these malfunctions.
Link to game website
Trailer
-
Prototyped and iterated upon player controls / movement systems for usability in a fully hand-tracked VR experience.
-
Developed narrative systems and wrote in-game content for canned dialogue, barklines, characters' journal and audio entries, and worldbuilding assets.
-
Designed levels in Unity for a zero-gravity VR environment, using puzzle-based mechanics and environmental storytelling to guide players through problem-solving scenarios.
-
Contributed in programming, adding intuitive functionality to UI systems, and modeling 3D assets to help milestone deadlines be met.
Level Design:
As a level designer on the team, my main responsibilities were creating the first and last levels of the game. I help concept the gameplay style we were aiming for, our puzzle elements, and the flow of the levels especially with laying out the narrative along with gameplay.
For the levels I created, I was responsible for: sketching initial ideas, creating the shape of these rooms and grayboxing both levels, rigorously testing gameplay, administering public playtests, programming new puzzle elements used throughout multiple levels or unique to my own, preliminary lighting for both levels—and final lighting for the first—and I also modeled & textured a few key assets needed for these levels. Lastly, I wrote the dialogue scripts for these levels, and all levels featured in the game, but I won't touch too much on that now. If you're interested, you can see my work done as a narrative designer here!
Level Showcases
08
Misc. Work:
Along with my Narrative and Level design responsibilities, I also took on the role of a flex / "Swiss-Army knife" for the team, lending a hand to different departments whenever I was able. This included 3D modeling and texturing, aiding in programming tasks like narrative triggers or scripting puzzle elements like the lasers below, and implementing UI and adding functionality for our terminal system. Below are samples of the various extra tasks I took on.
-
3D Modeling Assistance:
-
Central Rotating Tube, main prop element of last level
-
Model for Laser Emitters puzzle element
-
Process:
-
Blockout in Unity, Modeled in Maya, made materials Substance Designer then textured in Substance Painter.
-
Blockout
The last level, located in the Maintenance section of the spacecraft, features a large rotating central tube that the player travels within: weaving in and out of the tube ascending to the ground level.
Due to the nature of VR, motion sickness was a worry. With the tube rotating slowly, some players felt the motion sickness due to the tube constantly rotating around them while inside.
To resolve this, I modeled a rotating outer shell and a motionless inner shell. Since the outer shell had doorways, and the inner shell could not rotate, each layer of the inner tube had a carved out hole in the wall. As the outer doorway rotates around it, the larger gaps always provided a space for players to squeeze inside while minimalizing how much of the rotating tube they saw while inside.
Substance Painter Textures
Laser Emitter model:
Code sample of laser - Video of laser in use can be seen on Level 08 Showcase
UI Functionality for Terminal system, as well as populating the terminal's content.
bottom of page