Level Design + Narrative

Level Design Portal 2 game design narrative design puzzle Valve

Inspiration

As level designers, how do we guide players in an environment that's designed to confuse them?

Inspired by puzzling levels like Elden Ring's Leyndell Catacombs, I challenged myself over the course of four weeks to create a mind bending experience using the Portal 2 Editor.

Pillars

Single Player | First Person | Puzzle | Linear

- How can I create the illusion of a looping environment within the editor's technical limitations?

- Why would I want to confuse the player, and how will this fit with the narrative and the flow of the level?

- How to manage the player's cognitive load while having both a confusing environment and puzzle solving?

Creating the illusion

To start with, I wanted the player to experience a visual illusion and question what they see. I achieved this by duplicating rooms and using traversal time and verticality to blur the player's spacial awareness.

Here's an example to illustrate this idea:

Step 1: Player enters room A

Step 2: Notices 5 cubes below room A

Step 3: Goes to lower level to reach the cubes, but only finds 1 cube in room B

By placing both rooms close to each other, and by adding traversal time to go from room A to room B, players found themselves wondering where did the 5 cubes go during early playtests.

The illusion worked!

To further test the player's spacial awareness and tie it to the narrative (which I'll elaborate on later), I wanted the main layout of the level to repeat itself as the player progresses through the level.

This was achieved by duplicating the main layout of the level and connecting both sections to create a loop.

During playtests, the apparent contrast of color between the duplicated areas (see above GIF) wasn't noticeable by the majority of players. They thought they were back where they started.

This left me with the interesting insight that frame composition and lighting were enough to trick the player, despite the apparent black & white difference (literally!).

Puzzle Design

Given the confusing layout of the level, I had to be aware of the player's cognitive load when introducing puzzles.

Asset selection and puzzle pacing was crucial to give players the breathing room needed to progress.

Below are the assets I used to design the puzzles:

1. The reflector cube is used to redirect the lasers

2. The laser emitter well... it emits lasers

3. The laser receiver is a trigger that opens doors when the laser beam hits it

4. The angled panel also redirects laser beams in combination with the portal gun

Below is the puzzle progression, starting with an intro for using the Portal Gun and culminating in a final puzzle that combines what the player learned throughout the level:

1. A quick intro, where the only way forward is by using the Portal Gun

2. Introducing the Reflector Cube and the Laser Receiver

3. Combining the Portal Gun with the Laser Emitter

4. The Portal Gun is used for both laser redirection and player traversal

5. Introducing the Angled Panels to redirect lasers with the Portal Gun

6. The final puzzle, combining Reflector Cubes, the Portal Gun and Angled Panels to recreate the pattern.

Pattern? What pattern?

The Pattern

Throughout the level, we see a mysterious pattern of lasers and 5 cubes appearing in often inaccessible areas from the beginning till the very end of the level.

This was intentional to trigger the player's curiosity, to lead them in certain directions and to imprint the pattern in the mind of the player to finally replicate it in the final puzzle.

The Narrative

So what's this all about?

Why is the environment repeating itself?

What's with these patterns?

It's her...

Borrowing from the narrative of the Portal series, I used GlaDOS's voice, the supermassive AI antagonist, as the narrative element that brings together the weirdness of the environment, the puzzles and the patterns into a cohesive experience:

"You wake up from a long slumber in one of her facilities. As part of the Aperture Laboratories rehabilitation protocol, subjects like you are put to the test in order to restore your basic cognitive functions, starting with your ability for pattern recognition."

Players need their space when navigating a tricky environment and solving puzzles. Once I was happy with flow of the level, I wrote a script that complements the player's pacing and the puzzle progression to avoid the overlap of inputs that would affect negatively the player's experience.

When the script was done, I've imported it into a GlaDOS text-to-speech generator.

Due to the technical limitations of the Portal 2 Editor, I had to add the narrative layer in post production.

I've imported the generated voice lines together with a recorded play-through into Adobe AfterEffects, and added subtitles as a final touch.

Takeaway

1. Having a schedule and a clear design limitation at the beginning of the project was very beneficial to me, especially in moments when I started deviating from the original vision.

2. I learned to design within technical constraints: the Portal 2 Editor has a memory limit which depends on the assets and scripts used.

3. Designing a level with the narrative component in mind from the beginning elevated the quality of the whole experience.

4. I gained insights into player attention and psychology while designing optical illusions and looping level layouts.

The result

"Pattern": a linear experience that challenges the player's spacial awareness with a looping environment while tickling their brain with a puzzle progression.

Wanna play?

Here's the Steam Workshop link:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3116463402