What is 183 Cells Street?

183 Cells Street was a small level design project completed by three other students and I for a three week university project. The game puts the player in charge of a police officer investigating a disturbance within an abandoned apartment block… who soon discovers dark and horrific secrets lie within.

The project as a whole was purely to experiment with and build upon our level and environment design skills, in particular with a limited tile-set of 12 unique room shapes.

Role

PROGRAMMER & LEVEL DESIGNER

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Skills Used

The level design also aimed to communicate a story, showing the progression from apartment block, to secret lounge area and eventually into a laboratory experiencing a mass containment breach. This was achieved through progressive color palette changes, increasing number of enemies, appropriate changes to level geometry and increasing the number of suspicious items and props populating the scene.

Throughout the experience, the player must strategically manage their ammunition through avoiding direct encounters and collecting ammunition spread throughout the level. During the level design process, I was responsible for the process of placing these pickups strategically throughout the level to force players to play strategically. Furthermore, I also was in charge of rewarding the player for exploring the environment and unravelling the environmental storytelling.

The project features long claustrophobic hallways which open up into spacious but cluttered rooms, intentionally forcing the player into either out-maneuvering or confront their adversaries within short amounts of time. This design was implemented to encourage atomic and instinctive decisions from players, in particular, to evoke feelings of unease and tension.

As the player progresses through the experience, they eventually encounter a horde of undead mutants. I was responsible for programming the AI behind these enemies, in particular, I was responsible for meshing their pathways with the prop filled environment.

Grading

Distinction 80%

Screenshots & Grabs

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