OLIVER JONES
Level Designer
Catharium
Role: Level Designer
Team Size: 12
Engine: Unity
Development time: 9 months
Catharium is a narrative focused, first-person puzzle game. You play as Thomas Drewitt, a man who wakes up in a hotel unsure of how and why they are there. He is greeted by a Detective who is seeming to be investigating a murder. Compelled into helping the Detective, Thomas soon discovers all is not as it seems and he must solve puzzles to progress through the hotel and ultimately unveil the truth.
Personal Contributions
​Level Design
Systems Design
Pitching
Additional Contributions
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Git Management.
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Working with Programmers and giving feedback upon each puzzle.
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Working with Artists to ensure that level design blockouts can be replaced easily.
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Working with Writers to ensure that puzzles fit in with overall narrative.
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In charge of running Playtesting sessions with various groups of people to enable for different types of feedback.
Systems Design
One of the most important parts to the game was designing and pitching each puzzle. This meant not only making sure that they are fun, but also fit in well with the narrative. Having a full on environment based puzzle at the beginning of the game didn't seem to fit with the pace of the game, so we decided to go with smaller puzzles that were spread throughout gameplay. Each puzzle can be seen here:
These puzzles had a focus on being short, easy to understand and fit into the narrative. For example, in the therapist section of the game, we made puzzles that were slightly more difficult but still able to be completed. This meant that the player would mimic the in game character's feelings of frustration - which is the opposite of what a therapists office is supposed to do, but fit the level around the stage of anger.
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Before actually implementing many of the puzzles, I created some paper prototypes to save on time within the project. Early versions of the sliding block puzzle can be seen here:
Many of the puzzles made were inspired by puzzles played as kids, for example, the tower of hanoi puzzle. This meant that many players would be familiar with the rules and would be able to solve the puzzle with little issues. This resulted in puzzles, while still being challenging, left players with a sense of satisfaction when completed. Each puzzle had a pop up that explained the rules, this meant that even if players has not seen the puzzle before, they would have an explanation on how it works.
Level Design
As explained in the Systems Design​ section, it was important that the puzzles made sense according to the narrative. This meant that the puzzles were placed where the player had told to go and explore via in game characters. Each area of the game was representing a stage of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance). This meant that the area in which the puzzles took place had to have a reason for the player to be there.
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One of the key features that I focused on, was making sure that the player doesn't have to keep walking around the hotel as it can be boring and more of a "walking simulator." To make sure that this does not happen, I decided to keep unneccessary movement across the hotel to a minimum, however players were still able to explore if they wanted to.
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Towards the end of the game, we decided to make a large maze that the player had to explore in order to find numbers that would let them unlock the exit. To help the player with where they are in the maze, I decided to add common assets from the hotel, as well as making each number coloured and having the lights near the number be in the same colour. This can be seen here:
