shutterbuds
4 Player Open World Level August 2024-May2025
Level Designer / Product Owner Team Size: 17
Responsibilities: Level Design, Quest Design, Level Scripting, Interdisciplinary Communication
Project Overview
shutterbuds is a multiplayer photography game in which players explore a national park in order to take photos of different creatures and landmarks, so they can be submit for quests they pick up from different magazine brands!
Map Gallery
Level Philosophy
Throughout the development of shutterbuds I had to develop a core design philosophy for a multiplayer open world game. Something I had never tried before. I started doing some research and identified a few potential problems that could arise:
- Players are very likely to get lost
- Getting visual interest in a forest is not guaranteed
- Its hard to force collaboration in an open environment
- Implement trail signs to guide the player on a dirt trail
- Create key landmarks that can be used to communicate amongst fellow players
- Work these landmarks in to the core game loop to incentivize exploration and tie it back to player progression
Level Iteration / QA testing
Over the course of 27 weeks, I got to iterate two trails with the help of the champlain college testing lab. I learned many important things about the trail and the key things that make the level fun. Here are some stages of iteration I went through on the game’s main trail!
(CLICK TO ENLARGE IMAGES)
RED is for landmarks, YELLOW is for activities, and BLUE is for creature locations
This was my first prototype of the current main trail. It contained a basic path that looped back to the main camp. However, testing revealed that it lacked basic interest which I was preparing for. No creatures were in the game yet
Testers lacked a direction or interesting places to go, so over the next couple weeks I focused on trying different landmarks to guide player focus while traveling on the trail, as well as placing down the first creatures! These were also added to the quest system. I scripted an activity called disc golf to be placed on the map to also allow for players to have more passive fun! A firetower was added in the far corner because hikers often tend to hunt or track down fire towers as a main goal!
The landmarks were working well, but players were failing to find their way back to camp as well as finding each other when straying off the path. I worked with the art team to reduce the density of trees while still maintaining the feeling of a forest, as well as adding trail signs to guide the player, with more landmarks to increase on the content developed by the rest of the team. This is also when the trail intermission to the second are was first added, which I tested to make sure it was seamless
This leads to the final iteration of the level. I added multiple quest boards around the map to target a pain point of players having to go back to camp to submit quests, as well as maintaining proper foliage density, and working with the AI programmers to properly place creatures on the trail in memorable ways the player cannot miss. I created a new tutorial area to streamline player onboarding, and added the last areas that would need testing
Heat Maps
I worked with one of our team’s programmers to develop a heat map system that can be used for our QA testing! It can be used in the 3D space of the map. Thanks to his creation of this tool we got to track the paths that testers take and learn some very interesting things!
- Many players had no incentive to go to the center of the map
- a majority of players were following the trail directly and not straying away
- The landmarks were WORKING!
- Some players were able to escape the map
This system helped verify that my design philosophy was working, and the only time people seems to stray from the main path was when they got glimpses of landmarks, or saw some creatures they wanted to interact with. This meant people were not getting lost as frequently. Some things I did to help solve issues discovered were:
- Adding blocking volumes around all walls to prevent escape
- Adding a part of the trail in the center that has a new creature for a quest requirement
Download the project!
shutterbuds is available to wishlist on steam and will release on May 2nd! Go see for yourself what makes this project so cool!
Go to the steam page by clicking here