CARLOS GUTIERREZ | Game Designer
AMC's The Walking Dead Onslaught
Role:
Level Designer
Contributions:
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Level scripting
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Layout design
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Design documentation
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Environment building
Platforms/Rescources:
Trailer
Campaign
Campaign takes the player on a journey of two heroes trying to help a child find their parent across post-apocalyptic Virginia. I owned the Prologue level from concept to ship and provided design updates as well as scripting maintenance for several other levels.
PROLOGUE (What Comes Before And After)
I designed the player path, obstacles, and story beat framing. A tricky issue to overcome was making the first moments engaging enough to keep possible arcade players enticed while providing a slow ramp up for at-home players. To accomplish both goals I gave the player a very powerful weapon to start with, kept the path tightly directed, and set up easy enemies for the player to defeat in the first moments of play.
Scavenger
Scavenger Mode tasks the player with going out into zombie-infested city streets and suburban neighborhoods in order to gather resources that will help your crew rebuild their home base of Alexandria. I owned most levels from concept to ship, assisted with high-level game design of the mode, and designed the layout of Alexandria.
SCAVENGER MODE
Scavenger mode was designed to be a frantic high-risk high-reward collect-a-thon and the levels reflect that by having a fairly open, somewhat safe, direct path connecting the starting and ending points together while having branches off that path that increase in difficulty as well as resource density the further the player strays from the safe route.
Scavenger Mode World Map Design Doc Evolution
The progression of scavenger mode was initially open then moved to a wide-linear approach to provide a better sense of achievement when players unlocked a group of levels.
Scavenger Mode Level Design Approach
To achieve the high level goal of maximizing playable content from our levels I took an A/B approach to building levels. One environment with multiple spaces to loot but half those spaces would be inaccessible depending on which version of the level is being played. Full length scavenger levels consist of 3 "supply run" segments and 1 "outpost" meant to bookend the experience. The main path would get slightly more complex and break line of sight to the getaway vehicle to increase tension.
