A small level I made for a university class where we all took the same level and had establish our own atmosphere and theme for it using only lighting. I went for a police chase where you have to escape towards the light.
Download the levelsThe next task was to use architectural elements to create gameplay rhythm.
I started off a very open and wide walkway with a lot of depth, a regular pattern to the architecture, varied elements, and a clear focal point in the background. This was to give a slow ominous buildup to the next area. Then I led it to a very claustrophobic area with a low-hanging ceiling, irregular columns, only one type of column, and nothing in the distance to focus on. This creates a much faster and frantic rhythm in contrast to the previous area.
Download the levelsHere we had to take a pre-made monument-like asset and frame it to give it a cinematic feeling for when players see it for the first time.
I decided that I would like to create a contrast between the environment you have to traverse to reach the monument, and the environment of the monument itself. This is why the path to the monument is an aggressive bunker that leads to an underground claustrophobic and winding maze, and when you finally take the elevator up into the sky to see the monument, everything opens up and you're awe-stricken.
I also made it so that you're going up an elevator to keep players static and focused on what's coming up, building up the tension for the big reveal.
Download the levelsFor this level, we were tasked with creating our own affordances. An affordance is the action that an object allows doing, like stairs "afford" walking up or down them.
I wanted to create something really unique and mind-bending, so I decided to make a button that "affords" flipping gravity. This is very fun because it allows you to make some interesting platforming challenges and it also allows players to experience the same area in many different ways from wildly different perspectives. I made sure that players had to go all the way around the map and see the whole thing before they could flip the gravity, so that they could experience it normally and then contrast it to the new gravity. That, plus the crack in the wall pointing to the button, also help orient the player, so that they can understand that the gravity was changed and figure out which way is up and which way is down.
This was a lot of fun to make! Also hard, because I had to make the same map three times and then rotate it around, all inside the same Quake container. The buttons you press don't actually change gravity, they just teleport you to a different location on the map where the exact same geometry exists, but rotated :)
Download the levels