Canyon Village
A level design practice focused on creating an immersive and believable world.
Designed for a Third-Person Shooter experience, the level features a hierarchal society built on the walls of a canyon housing a waterfall.
Various LD techniques are used throughout the level which you can read about below.
Video Playthrough & Commentary
Playthrough of the level using JU Third-Person Character Controller Package.
Realtime playthrough of the level. No commentary.
Commentary on top of edited Playthrough.
World Building Details
Creating a believable world doesn't mean it has to abide by all laws of real life. It just means that whatever the situation is, whether it's a Cyberpunk world, a postapocalypse, a medieval fantasy, etc. the elements in that world help to create a livable space that corresponds to that theme.
While the playthrough videos above showed you around, below you are the various world-building details that can be witnessed and explored more by the Player.
The society is divided into 3 classes:
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Upper class which houses the leaders, nobles and masters.
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Middle class houses the security personnel the upper class hires to keep the lower class in line. They are offered better lives than the lower class but not the same level of quality that the upper class gets to enjoy.
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Lower class are the commoners and the backbone of the society who do the manual labor.
The placement (height in village), composition and building materials of each group distinguish them even more and create wide gaps between their quality of lives.
The lower classes use whatever materials they can get their hands on. Houses are built from poor quality, cracked and even rotting wood. Many houses are crooked and leaning. They are pretty small, often mistakable with mere shacks and are packed together tightly.
The Middle Class (which are the families of the security force) use better materials. While not the best they are certainly much better than the lower class and the houses are more spacious and built with actual standards.
The Upper Class are the ones who take the best materials. Clean shaven woods imported from all over. Each house is big, often multiple floors and spaced out from another creating an actual suburbs.
Even the Upper class's relation to the waterfall is different from other classes.
While they get to enjoy a coz park-like view of the waterfall, the lower class takes all the splash, having to endure the wetness and wood rot that comes with it.
The only way to reach the Upper Class platform is via the lift. There are no stairs or ladders or other climbable paths. Even the highest part of the security platforms still doesn't reach the top level.
The lift is the only way. It is a method of control, getting to select who and what reaches the top and what or who stays below.
Middle and Lower class may deliver goods via this lift but they're only allowed to admire from afar and are now allowed inside.
The upper level is held up by a few major pillars and a couple of support beams in the wall. These pillars hold the entire structure on their shoulders which is why no matter what, they must have a small clear space around and have protection cages installed around their bases to protect against accidents and vandalism.
As a means of control and protection against an uprising, laws have been placed where damage to these pillars or their protection cages is punishable by death.
These pillars are so important that the ones near the waterfall have their own dedicated splash-guards to protect against the waterfall's splash and humidity, making sure they don't rot over time.
One key note is that all these pillars start at the ground level right where the lower class lives. It's another way of saying that (much like the real world) the power is always in the control of the lower class. They always have the power to destroy these pillars and overthrow the rulers.
However, (again, like the real world) bringing down the rulers comes at a cost. Their platform is located above their homes, the ramp and the lake. Bringing it down will cause severe damages to their village, bringing up the question of "Whether we will be able to rebuild afterwards or have only destroyed what little we have". This itself is also another method of control.