Relapse
Outlandish Development
Overview
Relapse was created in Unity by Outlandish Development, a team of 15 game designers. It is a first person shooter game with ability-based combat, fast-paced movement, shops, and a comic book aesthetic. The player gains new abilities through the use of drugs as they slowly discover the harsh consequences of attaining them. Players who make poor decisions throughout the game will be forced to restart the cycle.
Interior Level Design
The interior spaces are in a broken down apartment that is overrun with monsters and hallucinations. The walls are decorated with distressed textures and decals as a reflection of the character's mental state. The hallways are filled with garbage, debris, and broken furniture to suggest that the place has been ransacked and abandoned. Lights outside of important doors shine brighter, and exit signs lead the way forward. This is where players meet dealers and have the choice to purchase abilities and weapons.
Exterior Level Design
Exterior levels focus on movement and combat. This mostly takes place on the rooftops of the inner city. These levels allow the player to wall-run on billboards, jump across the tops of surveillance drones, slide down ramps, and fight back against the monsters. These levels consist of traversal zones and combat zones with a big emphasis on verticality. The platforming gets more complex as the game progresses. These challenges include moving obstacles, larger gaps, destructible objects, and slides that require precise timing to preserve momentum.
Contributions
My primary role on this project was Level Designer, but I have also worked on the audio design, VFX, and animations. I have written and helped record several original songs for the game and balanced the audio levels between music and SFX. I spent a lot of time communicating with play testers to revise my levels so that they are satisfying to complete. I found that creating obstacles that appear more difficult than they are makes the player feel accomplished without getting frustrated.
Challenges
This project has taught me a lot about working asynchronously with large groups of people, and working with multiple designers on one scene while avoiding merge conflicts. A big challenge has been adhering to reasonable architectural conventions while designing a space that is unique. Having many designers working on one space resulted in layouts that were confusing for players. Lots of playtesting showed us that sometimes less is more. We completely redesigned all of our interior scenes and found ways to better guide the player through the critical path without getting lost.
