Portfolio Categories: Level design

Midnight Girl is a 2D puzzle mystery game. I worked as intern Level Designer on the project in 2020. The game was released on Steam in 2023.

My responsibilities:

• Level design – design, sketching, setup in Unity
• Cutscenes – setup cutscenes in Cinemachine in Unity
• Audio design

Work example

I worked on 4 different levels. Here I will present the one I worked on the most: The Prison. Also called “The Stranger”, in the final game.

My job was to plan the navigation through the level, sketch it out, and lay it out in Unity.

When I joined, the artist/game designer had already designed the rooms and items found in the level, but had yet to figure out a path that would make sense.
Additionally, I set up in-game cutscenes and dialouges in Cinemachine within Unity, and worked on the sound design for the game.

The game takes place in France in 1965. You play as Monique: A young thief who is planning a big heist to get money to reunite with her father.
After a failed attempt at stealing a valuable item, Monique ends up in prison and must break out.

In this level, Monique is now in prison.
She hears another prisoner call to her. It’s the infamous “Night Owl” (Gustave). A big inspiration to her.
They agree to escape together. With the help of Gustave, Monique breaks free from her cell and must sneak around the prison to find a way out.

Places

1. Laundry room.
2. Stair case (intersection)
3. Kitchen.
4. Monique’s cell (Player start)
5. Gustave’s cell.
6. The control room.
7. Phone room.
8. The courtyard / outside.

Navigation

1. Start in Monique’s cell (4).
2. Continue through the stair case section (2) to talk to Gustave (5) through the door.
3. First you must unlock his cell from the control room (6). Exit the building from the door at the ground level of the stair case.
4. When outside, a cutscene plays, showing Monique that prison vans can drive out through a gate.
5. Enter the control room from outside. Click the button. This room also contains coins from a “swear jar”.
6. Go to Gustave. He can’t think of a plan before he gets coffee. Monique reluctantly agrees to get him some. She takes his cup.
7. Go to the kitchen (3). Use the coins and cup to get coffee from the coffee machine.
8. Hand Gustave his coffee.
   The plan is to get a disguise and stage a prisoner transfer in a van. Gustave goes looking for keys to the van. Monique goes for a disguise. Gustave hands her a shiv.
9. With the shiv. Unscrew the vent in lower stair case, next to the phone room (7). Here is a disguise and a door to the second layer of the level.
10. Dodge patrolling guards.
11. Meet Gustave in the Warden’s office. He’ll complain that the disguise is dirty.
12. Go wash and dry the disguise in laudry room (1).
13. Return to Gustave with the clean disguise.
    
    Gustave then escorts you outside (8), and you use the prison van to escape together.

Process/sketches

I tried to spread out item collection evenly between rooms, to make sure every location served a purpose.

An early version of the level. This included an infirmary, a hammer for a lock on a door, and several keys. It became too many doors to unlock in too many weird ways. We shifted to focus on unique tasks rather than constant door opening. Like doing laundry (while tring to escape). The absurdity of that task made it fun.

Eventually, I switched to doing quicker sketches because I became so visually familiar with the level that drawing was unnecessary. These simply contained names of the locations. This made it much easier and quicker for my own work.
I of course drew it when I needed to present my ideas to the others.

This game was made for my second year exam.

The game is a mulitplayer (up to four) speed-runner. The players plays as gooey alien creatures, which are fleeing the desctruction of their planet. They are running towards a spaceship, which has only one seat available. This means that there can be only one survivor/winner.
The characters each has a “teleportation gun” that shoots beams which will swap the places of the character with whatever it hits – preferably other leading players, as they can take their place in the race.

I got to work with my main interests in this project, along with other smaller tasks.

My responsibilities:

• Level design (modules for procedural generated level)
• Music and sound effects
• UI design
• 3D animation setup in Mixamo
• Partly game design

The level design

The process started when we decided we wanted a procedural generated level to race through. I came up with a lot of sketches (one of them is seen above). I tried to incorporate the gameplay mechanics into the layout as much as possible.
One example is how I placed holes in the environment, which are too small to run through, but big enough to shoot your teleportation beam through, allowing you to take a big shortcut, if you’re successful in hitting another player through the hole.
Another thing I tried was to mix up open areas with Super Mario-like platforming, with narrow corridors and underground areas, allowing for intense gameplay as the teleportation beams can bounce off walls several times.
As perhaps can be seen, I also suggested that all modules could be mirrored, in order to create a larger range of randomization and make the level feel less repetitive, if you are playing for a long time.

The music

Some of the keywords for the music was spacey, exciting and silly. The track was made to increase excitement over time. To do this, layers are continuously added to the track and drums are changed to also increase the sense of pace. Additionally, the tempo is steadily increased over time in an attempt to further rush the players. Listen to the full track below.

I also made a “lobby version” of the track. In this, the tempo is significantly lowered and the instruments are changed to resemble elevator or lounge music, rather than techno and spacey music. Listen to the lobby version below.

The game is for 2-4 players and requires controllers. You can download it for windows here: https://joakimcarlsen.itch.io/last-jeli