Valentin Lai Su Maine

The Hama Inn is a map realized under Unreal Engine 5. It is build only using primitive shapes, mostly boxes. It was made in the objective of practicing and displaying my skills at grey-boxing level design.

Project produced in 60 hours.

Level Design requirements :

• Level shall include platforming, puzzle and combat.
• Playthrough shall be under 30 minutes.
• Backtracking should be reduce to minimum.
• Level include inside and outside environment.
• Puzzle is link to the narrative of the level.
• Level must be designed to offer a moderate challenge.

The Hama Inn map is realized to be a secondary objective location within an open-world game inspired by the structure and gameplay of « The Witcher 3 ».
This level put emphasis on the layout and terrain navigation as well as the atmosphere. To keep better control of the layout and framing I placed, throughout the level several, camera actor that would serve as reference shot to work on my composition.

This is a practice I developped while designing this level which proved to be very efficient. This result in several beauty shot moment during the level made to trigger astonishment to the player as well as guiding and communicating objective non-verbally following the « Show don’t tell » motto.

Here is the Level Design document for the Hama Level.

Hama Inn map is partly inspired by the amazing work of the photograph Benjamin Beech.