Level Design for Zodiac Attack
In my experience, the most fun part of game design. A lot of my work goes through many phases, being reassessed, redone and endless polish.
Core Level Design Challenge ->
A major challenge across the entire project was designing environments that worked around a fully adjustable racetrack system. Every level had to support flexible track movement, we had to be ready to move the track into an entirely different position at a moments notice! Meaning every model touching the track was connected to splines.
Worked on all Great Wall materials and simplified the brick models based on client and art director feedback to better match realistic sandy brick textures... while remaining low poly. I also used billboard trees to reduce draw calls, scripted floating sky balloons, and built raised track supports using modular brick placement.
Helped design and construct the large spiral mountain environment using a highly optimized modular workflow built from only a few repeating rock assets. A major challenge was ensuring the mountain wrapped around the spiral track cleanly without intersecting lower track sections.
Contributed to the candy-themed environment by creating interior candy walls, ground textures, and stylized water materials. I also helped assemble market props and designed a modular bridge system that blended seamlessly into the racetrack using custom wood assets and spline placement.
Placed large-scale foliage using Unity’s terrain tools and created a stylized waterfall effect using a custom scrolling shader and animation inspired by hand-painted animation styles. I also adjusted custom lighting settings to achieve sharper stylized shadowing across the environment.
Built and textured terrain, placed environment props, and designed the garden area from concept art. To enhance the scale of the environment, I created custom fog materials and horizon masking techniques to give the illusion of an endless landscape.
Developed the full level from greybox to final implementation, including terrain sculpting, texturing, spline editing, obstacle placement, and environment assembly inside Unity.
Created early environment concepts for the unreleased tracks Twisted Ravine and Dragon Skyway, helping establish their initial gameplay direction and visual themes.
