Level Designer | Game Designer | Programmer
Ground Zero
Procedural dungeon rooms built around melee-first player agency.
Ground Zero is a top-down dungeon crawling rogue-like. Your goal is to delve into the power plant, fighting off enemies, exploding barrels, and dodging a variety of traps.
Project facts
- Developer(s)
- ISU Game Development
- Platform(s)
- PC
- Genre(s)
- Top-Down, Roguelike, Dungeon-Crawler
- Release date
- November 1st, 2020
- Project length
- 3 months
- Engine & tools
- Unity, GitHub, Discord, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Slides
Roles & responsibilities
Level Design
- Drafted procedurally generated rooms.
- Playtested and iterated rooms.
Programming
- Coded aspects of the rooms' functionality (door slide, item pickup).
Game Design
- Drafted bosses and encounter mechanics.
- Balanced enemies and items.
- Designed area themes.
Research
- Analyzed the level design of games inspiring this project such as The Binding of Isaac and Nuclear Throne.
Behind the scenes
The player would start off with a knife for a melee weapon and the rooms were randomly generated. With that in mind, we were designing the levels around the possibility that a player would have no ranged weapons available. The levels I generally designed for this game would require the players to approach enemies differently depending on whether they had a ranged weapon or not. For example, if you had only a knife, you would have to be spotted by a ranged enemy and lure him around the corner to melee it to death—or you could fire at the barrel next to them without engaging in close-quarter combat. Each level has been made to give empowerment to the player regardless of what weapon they have with their own creative solutions.
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