Prehistoric Pack Level Work

ROLE

Level Designer

DESCRIPTION

Different functional levels based on a hexagonal grid built for a Capstone and Game Studio project game called Prehistoric Pack. The different levels include different placements and difficulties that enemy dinosaurs can appear with, as well as different modifiers, objectives, and pathways that both friendly and enemy dinosaurs can take depending on the layouts built in and refined in unreal engine 5.

Date

May 2026

GENRE

Single Player Auto Battler

Engine

Unreal Engine 5

Role

Level Designer

Team Size

Prehistoric Pack is a #D auto-battler game built in Unreal Engine 5, in which the player opens up packs of cards containing different dinosaurs and upgrades called marks that the player can use on their various different dinosaurs. The player's main goal in Prehistoric Pack is to amass a team of dinosaurs that utilizes the synergies of their different abilities as described on their cards in order to defeat eight waves of enemy dinosaurs on a hexagonal grid layout.

There is a total of two different environments in Prehistoric Pack, them being the Forest and the Volcano, each containing two different levels, each with eight rounds, that follow a certain level design philosophy for each environment. Levels contain different elements such as enemy dinosaurs, objectives, blocked tiles, tile walls, and player start tiles, and as a level designer it was my job to, over time, create and refine various different layouts and enemy dinosaur line-ups with altered stats to create a fun and challenging level for each environment, while also being tasked with being the deciding force behind the philosophy of how different Levels for each environment should be designed.

In order for us level designers to make our levels for the type of game that Prehistoric Pack is, a level creation tool was needed, and so one of our fellow technical designers was able to make us just that. With this level tool, I was able to quickly create and iterate on level layouts, as well as enemy dinosaur line-ups and their stats. I was then able to take the data files of the levels that I created and iterated on, and migrate them content folder of our project, then moving them to the correct specific folder as well as creating a new level description file for them to be placed in the level line-up array, or replacing levels already in level description files with the new ones to quickly get new versions of levels playable and in the game.

Originally, we actually had three environments planned for Prehistoric Pack, as in addition to the forest and the volcano, we were going to include the tar pits environment, and for a while, we were even playtesting levels for said environment. However, once it came down to making cuts later in the project's development, the tar pits were unfortunately cut as a result of a struggle to find it a unique enough gameplay identity that fit within the confines of the game without breaking it, as well as art scope, and the want and need to focus our time and energy on polishing other parts of the level design and art.

In order to give the two environments as different feelings and identities as possible, both were given different design elements and ideas to follow in order to differentiate the two. The forest focuses on facing enemy dinosaurs that while not as strong as those in the volcano level, attack in larger numbers, forcing the player to have larger groups of enemies to fight, while also focusing on giving this larger amount of enemy dinosaurs room to breathe with a much more wide-open level layout. The forest was designed with a more open and less restricted level feel in mind, as my forest level uses very little tile walls and blocked tiles in comparison to the Volcano. The objectives tend to be farther away from each other here to focus on having more room around the middle of bigger dinosaur fights. Finally, with each environment hosting a different line-up of which dinosaur families can appear as enemy dinosaurs, which was also decided as a way to make each environment feel more unique gameplay-wise, the forest features Theropods, Raptors, and Ceratopsians, as these dinosaurs tend to have more of a pack or herd potential.

The Volcano on the other hand, focuses on a much more close quarters and almost maze-like level layout with a focus on having much less enemy dinosaurs per round, with the enemy dinosaurs being much stronger than those within the forest. The volcano makes much more use of tile walls and blocked tiles, having many that create different pathways and routes for dinosaurs to take, while also separating the objectives, which are a little closer together than those within the forest level. With the objectives being closer together, the higher usage of tile walls and blocked tiles not only makes the path from objective to objective more than just a straight walk, but it also encourages more head-to-head battles between dinosaurs with more one tile wide straightaways and corridors. For this environment, the Theropods, Stegosaurians,a and Pterasaurians were featured, not only because of their higher potential to be individually very strong and difficult to take down, but also because the Pterasaurians can fly over walls, and making use of that mechanic proved to be a fun way to spice up the level.