LEVEL DESIGN

Solar Echoes TTRPG: Emergent Storytelling through Level Design

In the Solar Echoes adventure mission, Operation: Broken Citadel, I designed a tense, evolving environment aboard a space station in catastrophic failure, where the station itself dynamically affects the characters in the story. Players must navigate rooms and disaster events along their path to escape, encountering opportunities for exploration with abandoned valuables and side areas rewarding careful observation. However, the GM escalates the frequency of hazards and disaster events every round of the game.

The GM map I created for part of this level shows encounters, event order, and “disaster event map icons” to visually communicate hazards and their locations, with strict timers ensuring environmental escalation as the station breaks apart. Randomized and scripted events such as blaring alarms, electrical spark cascades, falling metal debris, and anti-gravity failures enhance unpredictability and emergent storytelling, making each playthrough unique.

This adventure demonstrates my approach to level design: building dynamic, reactive environments that pace narrative tension, encourage emergent player decisions, and leverage visual and systemic tools to guide both the GM and players through a memorable, interactive experience. The GM must improvise around unpredictable player choices while using environmental tempo, escalating threats, and risk management to drive players toward crucial story beats, balancing freedom with narrative momentum.

Unity ARPG: Level Design in Space

Designing level structure in a 2D space environment presents a unique challenge--without terrain, walls, or traditional layouts, level design must emerge through layout, exploration flow, and player guidance systems. In my ARPG, I solved this by treating each star system as a self-contained level, structured with invisible navigational boundaries, encounter placement, and hub-based progression. Groups of star systems are embedded inside larger "Deep Space" transitional areas.

Level Structure and World Layout

Star Systems as Levels

Each star system functions as a circular “level” within the larger galaxy.

  • I placed a black ring collider around each system (invisible to the player) that acts as an exit trigger.

  • Flying in any direction away from the sun eventually transitions the player into Deep Space, the connective tissue between star systems.

  • This allowed free movement in any direction while still giving the world structure, pacing, and zones of interest.

Deep Space as an Exploration Layer

Deep Space is a vast, open region containing:

  • roaming NPCs

  • derelict ships

  • anomalies such as asteroid, electrical storms, and other hazards

  • smugglers, pirates, and black-market traders

  • secrets and off-grid encounters that contrast with safe, populated systems

  • mysterious wormholes containing powerful artifacts and other discoveries

Deep Space also uses a larger circular trigger network to transition between Deep Space sectors containing different star systems. In practice, the entire game world is an interconnected series of circular exploration zones, each seamlessly linking to the next.

Unity ARPG: Cave and Dungeon Level Design, in Space!

Alternate-Dimension “Cave” Spaces

I designed wormholes to fill the same role that cave systems or dungeons serve in fantasy RPGs: self-contained, dangerous, puzzle-like environments that reward players for diving into the unknown.

Wormholes act as rare, high-risk exploration zones hidden across the galaxy. They usually sit far off normal travel paths, so players wouldn’t naturally discover them without intel gathered through quests, conversations, or other discoverable clues. Once the player obtains coordinates, they can locate and attempt to enter a wormhole and explore what’s inside.

Wormhole Interiors

When the player enters a wormhole, their ship is transported to a pocket dimension--a confined, shifting maze made of fluctuating energy walls that:

  • rotate

  • expand and contract

  • stretch and shrink

These walls damage the player on contact, block progress, and ricochet weapon fire, creating a dynamic, constantly changing maze that requires timing, spatial awareness, and fast adaptation. Additionally, time fluctuates inside these spaces, randomly slowing the player for a short duration before restoring the normal flow of time.

Neverwinter Nights 2: Electron Toolset (Avendale Adventure Module)

With early access to Obsidian’s Electron toolset 30 days before NWN2’s launch, I committed to releasing a fully playable adventure for the community on day one. During that month, I learned the toolset from scratch, built an entire quest-driven game called Avendale, and became the first creator to publish a complete module using the NWN2 toolset.

Environment and Level Design

  • Sculpted diverse topography: mountains, valleys, forests, and river systems.

  • Built interior and exterior spaces: caves, crypts, towns, building interiors, and a multi-level wizard’s tower with a dungeon.

  • Authored atmospheric setting through lighting and 3D positional audio triggers to support exploration and mood.

  • Designed traversal flow, discoverable cues, and environmental gating to guide players

Outcome

  • First full NWN2 module released publicly using the Electron toolset, available at game launch.

  • Highly downloaded for months, becoming a reference example for new creators learning the toolset.

  • Demonstrated rapid tool adoption, narrative systems integration, and full adventure shipping under a tight self-imposed deadline.

Tales from Frah’Akin: Level Design of the Demon Realm Labyrinth

For Pandoneum Studio’s Tales from Frah’Akin, I designed a climactic labyrinth in the demon realm, constructing a map compatible with the game engine while maintaining visual and stylistic consistency with the game’s fantasy world. The level leverages player abilities gained throughout the game, including walking through fire, creating stone bridges with magic, and manipulating large objects with wind. I created layout challenges across the map that encourage creative problem-solving and demonstrate the relevance of newly acquired abilities within the game world.

Throughout the map, I carefully placed encounters and traps with a frequency and intensity that gradually ramps up to build tension and risk as the player progresses. Environmental storytelling is layered throughout, using subtle details like bones near a strange plant tumor, hinting at hazards and deepening the realm's twisted atmosphere. This project demonstrates my approach to level design: designing spaces that are visually compelling, mechanically engaging, and narratively resonant.