Born Without Brakes (BWOB)

Role / Responsibilities: Combat Systems, Level Design, UX & UI

Team: Duo Development

Tools: Godot engine, Google Documentation Suite

Development: 3 months

Game Overview

Born Without Brakes - BWOB is a fast paced co-op wave shooter where players survive a robot apocalypse.

BWOB keeps players moving and engaged in combat with threatening, agile enemies and map mechanics that push players into different areas of play.

Level Design pipeline

Building threatening AI

One of the main challenges we faced during development was developing a threatening AI. This was an issue we knew about from our own testing but also player feedback and testing observations.

I worked with a programmer to build a solid enemy AI that could always navigate towards the player.

  • I set up Nav-Links all around the level to connect Nav-Mesh chunks to allow the robot enemies to “jump”.

  • This meant enemies could always reach the player as Nav-Links were on all surfaces.

  • I also provided them with many shortcuts around the level so they could pursue the player from multiple directions and apply pressure.

pink Nav-Link rings

Fast Paced Combat

I tested various movement based abilities during prototyping to ensure what we landed on for the final kit available to the player was satisfying and meaningful.

This includes planning, tweaking and frequently playtesting the slide ability, wall-run, bunny hop and rocket jump.

I designed the level to encourage and sometimes require the use of the games movement mechanics to smoothly traverse.

Not all our movement plans made it into the final game, some abilities were cut, such as:

  • Grapple hook ability

  • Shotgun movement boost

Level layout paper prototype overlayed onto in-game level

I started designing the level with iterations of a paper prototype, followed by a 3D blockout that was refined and tweaked into the final design and finally the implementation of final art assets.

  • The players movement abilities were key in the designing the level.

  • Certain areas are designed to encourage the use of sliding, wall running and mounting, apparent by the use of indicating graffiti on the walls.

  • I designed the level to contain zero dead ends players could end up in.

This was a problem I wanted to avoid particularly for a fast paced game like this and I made sure players always had alternate routes to escape problematic situations.