Sleep Swimmer
Beyond Tomorrow Studios
Role: Level designer / UX Designer
January 2024 - present
Role: Level designer / UX Designer
January 2024 - present
Game Summary
Sleep Swimmer is a 2D cozy narrative adventure game. Gameplay revolves around exploring the town and surrounding areas, interacting with unique characters, making music with the DJ mixing mechanics, and uncovering the story of Aria and the salamanders.
Players swim around this vibrant aquatic world and collect sounds, mix them on their DJ set, and make friends with the salamander townsfolk.
Players swim around this vibrant aquatic world and collect sounds, mix them on their DJ set, and make friends with the salamander townsfolk.
Contribution:
- Redesigned existing levels to address changes in the game direction and created new levels in close collaboration with art and design departments.
- Iteratively designed, developed and implemented UI elements including the DJ system.
- Implemented gameplay content including levels, puzzles and quests.
- Created custom shaders using shader graphs.
Tools Used:
Unity Engine
Level Design Process
Sunken City Ruins: Case Study
Design Goals for this Level:
- Working closely with 2D artists, redesign the space to match the aesthetic of the other levels and the narrative themes of the game.
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This level is set in the ruins of a lost civilisation with its secrets and grand architecture similar to Atlantis, drawing insporation from ancient Greek and Roman architecture.
- The level should be clear and straightforward but with a right balance of challenge and exploration.
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The level feels overly linear, offering limited opportunities for player exploration.
- Verticality and the player’s full range of swimming movement are underutilised, resulting in a flatter experience.
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Puzzle positions and design of the spaces lack consistency and cohesion, with placements that feel random and no clear progression or guidance for the order in which sounds should be collected.
One main structure:
I proposed the idea of having one main building places amongst the ruins that would tie the environment together and provide opportunity for vertical exploration of the space.
Sections:
I broke the level down into shorter sections that had clear goals. Each section would have a puzzle associated with it with 2-5 steps needed to solve each.
Guidance and Clarity:
For players to effectively plan for these sections they need to be able to immediately observe what the problem is. They don’t need to see every step, but the blocker and solution should be immediately apparent.
I proposed the idea of having one main building places amongst the ruins that would tie the environment together and provide opportunity for vertical exploration of the space.
Sections:
I broke the level down into shorter sections that had clear goals. Each section would have a puzzle associated with it with 2-5 steps needed to solve each.
Guidance and Clarity:
For players to effectively plan for these sections they need to be able to immediately observe what the problem is. They don’t need to see every step, but the blocker and solution should be immediately apparent.
Here are some of the examples of design iterations.
Since the game is fully 2D, achieving a sense of depth was an important design goal. To support this, parallax scrolling was introduced, which added visual layering and made the world feel more immersive and dynamic.
I split the environment into three main sections: background, middleground, and foreground. Each layer was placed at different positions along the Z-axis to create a parallax effect that enhanced the sense of depth and immersion within the 2D space.
Since the game is fully 2D, achieving a sense of depth was an important design goal. To support this, parallax scrolling was introduced, which added visual layering and made the world feel more immersive and dynamic.
I split the environment into three main sections: background, middleground, and foreground. Each layer was placed at different positions along the Z-axis to create a parallax effect that enhanced the sense of depth and immersion within the 2D space.
Final results
Examples of Other Levels