Wizard For Hire
In need of a job?
You’re in luck, dear wizard!
The townsfolk have been struggling with a recent infestation of Glowblins (glowing goblins, as you know), and need a hand with clearing them out. Head to the tavern and see who is around and in need of your skills.
Getting started with the project, one of our designers was interested in attempting to create a rouge-like experience.
From there, the idea of little levels or “quests” came to be, and thus, the wizard for hire was created.
For this project, I was one of two level designers, and also did quite a bit of user research for our game.
Creating levels for each quest
When we started the project, our team didn’t have a clear idea of what areas we exactly wanted to explore. We threw around ideas like a sewer, ruins, a basement, and eventually determined we wanted three quest areas:
a basement for the tavern you begin in
a sewer-like area for deeper under the “town” we are in
a mineshaft of some sort, where a town worker might frequent
Due to our time constraints, we were advised to use asset packs instead of creating our own art assets. That also played a large factor in determining our final areas, as we were working with whatever was available to us.
With that in mind, I worked on creating the tavern, the mines, and then collaborating with the other level designers to create the basement.
The Basement
The first quest you receive is from the barkeep of the tavern, which leads you to the tavern’s basement. The first part of this area is to tutorialize the dash mechanic, the upgrades, and then how combat works before you enter the final room pictured above, filled with beer and hordes of Glowblins.
During the first week of our project, we had to start getting some kind of level created to test movement and nail down our environmental themes.
With that, I made a lot of different concepts, some of which I pivoted to use for the levels that made it into the game.
Assets in early iterations and how they were adapted into the game.
Initial Concept
How the wizardry began
Wizard for Hire is a short, 5-week academic project with a team of 5 designers at DigiPen.
For this project, I was a level designer and user researcher.
The Tavern
For the tavern, I wanted to create something that resembled your classic fantasy tavern, or as close as I could get with the time and assets on hand!
The tavern features a barkeep and multiple patrons, all of which give you different quests to complete, as you walk around to each one.
The Mines
After completing the other quests, one patron will request you come to the mines, our final area. It consists of different connected rooms that promotes exploration with semi-linear guidance, terrain hazards, and a mixture of different types of Glowlins that the player has encountered over their previous quests.
A Practice in Rapid Iterations
A different skill that this project really helped me expand was doing a lot of level concepting and iterations, and doing it quickly.
Early concepting for a sewer grate - to be used as a sightline.
Sandbox level created to test movement and enemy pathing.
Final Game Asset
Final walkway over a pit in the mines level.
Early concepting for a walkway on top of a hazard.
Final top-down layout for the mineshaft level.
Final concept for the basement grate, to contain the beer.
Short-term User Research
Some of the coded notes from early playtesting.
Early concept for the layout of potentially sewer passages.
User Research for this game was fast, and ongoing throughout the five-week production period.
My main method was playtesting for this project, along with a structured interview to really hit on topics that felt crucial to the team and our short development scope.
With this in mind, our priorities were:
player perception on game feedback
player thoughts on the rouge-like system
how clear the level guidance was based on observation during playtesting
With continual playtesting, we iterated as much as we could towards our final game.