∴Life is Strange: Before the Storm∴

Overview

    Life Is Strange: Before the Storm is a cinematic narrative adventure game and the second game in the award-winning Life Is Strange franchise. I was brought onto the team at Deck Nine as the 3rd Junior Level Designer during the end of the preproduction phase. Some of my first tasks for the game were working on the Vertical Slice levels and designing future content for scenes later in the first episode. The level design team reported directly to one of the co-directors of the project and I was promoted to Level Designer shortly after the release of the first episode in August 2017. I regularly communicated and collaborated with the Narrative, Programming, and Art teams, helping to create everyday environments that players would want to explore.
I also worked on a bonus DLC episode for this title.

Game Info

Developer: Deck Nine Games
Genre: Narrative Adventure
Publisher: Square Enix
Game Engine: Unity
Platforms: PC, PS4,
Xbox One, Mac, Linux, Mobile
Team Size: Around 60
Release Date: Episodic
Episode 1 – Aug. 31, 2017
Episode 2 – Oct. 19, 2017
Episode 3 – Dec. 20, 2017

Tools Used

-Unity Game Engine
-Autodesk Maya
-Microsoft Office
-Visual Studio
-Jira Software
-Confluence
-Perforce
-Playwrite
-Storyteller
-Photoshop
-Inkscape

General

• Created 2D layouts and 3D greybox levels
• Prototyped early versions of full scenes to iterate on functionality, flow, and progression
• Taking Levels from concepts to Final Polish
• Designed and worked on game puzzles
• Built navmesh, camera colliders, and interact points so that the finished level would function
• Set up NPC idles and related functionality
• Helped manage the scene structure and order
• I helped with playtests and provide feedback for other departments and fellow level designers
• Fixed a variety of game logic and content bugs for every scene across the three episodes
• Collaborated with other departments such as Narrative, Environment, Animation, Cinematic Artists, Programming, and Production to achieve project goals for my levels

Documentation

• Creating and maintaining Level Design Docs for all of the scenes I was responsible for
• Updated progress documents for game features
• Tracked my solutions on my bug tickets/wrote bug tickets for other departments
• Wrote, reviewed, and implemented hints/objectives to help give players direction
• Made pitch docs for environmental storytelling, additional content, and unique gameplay

Research

• Researched systems, features, and gameplay within the original Life is Strange
• Identified script errors that did not adhere to canon and helped come up with solutions
• Asked leads about their team’s progress and pipeline to help learn about other departments

My Levels

Episode 1: “Awake” – Junkyard –

    The American Rust Junkyard is a location from the original LiS that is featured once per episode in Before the Storm. My design process for this existing space becoming 3 new scenes was to focus on reusability. The time period difference between games and the scene theme itself allowed me to reorganize where the junk piles and environment obstacles actually were, shaping new paths and cutting off others. The goal behind these changes were to remove unnecessary areas, add new ones, and divide the level up. This allowed each scene to feel unique, with different gameplay elements, puzzles, and varied exploration size. The first episode junkyard scene comes at an emotional highpoint inside our cinematic story, pacing wise. During the first Junkyard level, Chloe (player character) and her new friend/potential love interest Rachel get into a disagreement. The real reasoning behind Rachel’s sudden mood change is not yet revealed to the player, but a major choice is available before Rachel leaves the now upset Chloe alone among all the junk. This sorrow quickly turns to anger, which created a unique opportunity for me. I was able to build a level where every action verb the player is able to do taps into that emotion. This resulted in a fun and dramatic scene that involved smashing the surrounding junk objects as the focus of the critical path. (2:38:50 – 2:49:52)

Episode 2: “Brave New World” – Frank’s RV –

    Frank’s RV is another returning location from the original game. Chloe is tasked with going to the bedroom at the back of the RV, finding the debt notebook, and returning to the front of the vehicle to speak with Frank. She then has the opportunity to Backtalk Frank into giving up some information on a mysterious woman that Chloe wants to know more about. This was an interesting space to reimagine for our game with several nods to events, objects, and characters in the original. My favorite technical challenge was helping the Environment team with the design for getting the RV to appear as if it’s moving down the road while the player navigates around the various content and rooms inside. (1:21:56 – 1:33:03)

Episode 3: “Hell is Empty” – Hospital –

    The Hospital is a narrative exploration level and one of the new spaces that I was able to design from a 2D paper layout into a fully polished level. The critical path progression for this scene is straightforward (Chloe must go check on Rachel in room 781) because of pacing purposes in the overall narrative. This scene is very much a breather before the climax sections of this episode, giving the player a chance to investigate side plots. My design goal was to make it easy to locate that room, but not until the player is finished exploring other areas and the massive amount of content. I enjoyed helping the Cinematics and Writing teams add the 2nd Tabletop section into this scene. (1:17:26 – 2:58:13)