Hopeguard (2025)
PUZZLE DESIGN
LEVEL DESIGN
NARRATIVE DESIGN
UNREAL ENGINE 5
MIRO
NOTION
PERFORCE
Hopeguard is an adventure game where you play as a proud Hopeguard, one of the most respected knights tasked with finding and defeating the last known dragon that has taken possession of the Forge. However, in a twist of events, you only manage to injure the dragon before it severs your arm, leaving you to fall into a strange and forgotten part of your land. Now without your arm or sword, you must find your place in the world and redefine honor as you navigate through the wilderness.
This project was developed by a team of 24 individuals as part of my university course, where I held the position of Lead Level Designer. It was released on Steam at the end of February 2025.
As Lead Level Designer, I was responsible for:
- Reviewing level flowcharts, plans, and blockouts, and providing feedback at every stage
- Collaborating with the Game Director to fine-tune gameplay feel and pacing
- Working with the Lead Enviro to ensure a cohesive visual and gameplay vision across all levels
- Solving design challenges alongside the Game Director and other level designers
- Assessing gameplay and level flow to ensure a consistent and engaging player experience
- Designing and iterating the onboarding plan to support the desired gameplay pacing
- Designing puzzles for all levels in collaboration with the other designers
- Designing and implementing the Village level, from flowchart and layout planning to blockout integration in Unreal Engine 5
- Contributing to narrative development and reviewing dialogue to ensure tonal consistency with key story beats
- Attending playtests at every development milestone to gather feedback
- Creating drafts for in-game events using Unreal Engine 5’s Sequencer Editor
First version of the Village (Fall 2024)
The village is the fourth section of the prototype. In this level, players wake up in the middle of a forest, healed by a mysterious creature, after passing out of exhaustion and blood loss. They have to process what just happened to them and find a new way to advance into the world, one step at a time.
1. Design intentions
To begin to design this level, I first had to define what was supposed to happened story-wise at this moment of the game. Where the character was, what had just happened to him before and what was the goal of the level. With these informations, I defined that the themes of the level were of loss, anger and denial. This help me define the tone of the dialogues in the level.
After that, I made a list of the mechanics that the player needed to learn to help determine how many segments I wanted for the perfect pacing.
2. Flowchart
With the intentions defined, I began to make a flowchart to plan an order of the elements that were gonna be part of the level. In it, I described the scripted events, the player’s actions, the dialogues moments, the puzzles, the vistas et when they were an important environmental storytelling element. Placing these box helped me construct the pacing that I envisioned in my last step and make sure that I could fit every piece together.
3. Plan
Once the flowchart was done, I draw a first draft of the level to have a visual guide of the map to present the level to the other level designers with the flowchart. This help me visualize the space needed and the traversals moment between the puzzles.
4. Blocking
When the flowchart and the plan was approved by the lead designer and the lead level artist, I began to integrate the blockout to have a first playable version of the level. In-engine, some adjustments needed to be made to work with the camera system of the game. Finally, the level was working perfectly, with a good pacing that engaged players.
5. Reiteration process
My biggest challenge with this level was that after two rounds of testing, we decided to completely change the onboarding plan for the players. This impacted the first and last segments of the level, in which the puzzles had to be completely changed. But, with these changes, the pacing was better and the puzzles became more interesting, polishing the experience of the players.