Overview

Villa was built in UE5 with in-house assets and tools as a settlement prototype. Over several passes and iterations, this space became an exercise on framing and breaking rectilinear, uninteresting spaces. Multiple levels of the town break up the flatness of the area, and stairways are also staggered to create depth.

The narrative drive begins the player at the lower docks, with the goal of reaching the manor at the highest point. The villa is infested with enemies of several difficulties, with engagements spanning swathes of the villa and leading the player towards the top before capping out with a wave defense at the end.

See the flyover for Villa below!

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Theme

This top-down settlement was designed as an elegant estate, likely owned by a wealthy individual whose dwelling overlooks the settlement at the highest point. There is one heavily defensible entry, which narratively drives the player to engage from the waterfront.

Layout

First iteration, a basic structure of the villa was formed, sans the rear stairwell that curves around to the lower docks. The idea of having multiple terrain elevations created interesting spaces for the player to navigate and for enemies to defend. The latter iterations focused on adding the rear stairwell up to the central plaza as an alternate path.

Encounter Design

Areas were revisited and iterated upon to provide more areas for enemies to engage and react to the player. This meant expanding a few areas and adding bits of cover and navigational options for the player. Specifically, forcing the enemies to fallback to secondary and tertiary locations artificially brought the simplistic AI to life more than a few firing points would have. Rooftops are easily accessible and invite the player to hop along them to find creative firing locations and advantageous cover.