AUSTIN FERNANDEZ
Level Designer
FORT KHAROS
LEVEL BLOCKOUT
INSPIRED BY DOOM ETERNAL
WALKTHROUGH
OVERVIEW
Fort Kharos is an original level inspired by the combat philosophy and environmental design of Doom Eternal. Set within a fallen Sentinel fortress built atop a mountain peak, the project explores fast-paced combat and layered arena design while emphasizing readability and player flow.
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Designed, blocked out, and iterated on an original Doom Eternal-inspired level.
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Developed a custom gameplay framework including player movement, enemy AI, combat systems, and environmental mechanics to support rapid level iteration.
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Created all environmental meshes with Unreal 5's modeling toolkit.
OBJECTIVES
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Capture the sped and combat rhythm of Doom Eternal via high player mobility, aggressive enemy pressure and varied traversal options.
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Design highly readable, looping arenas that reward continuous movement.
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Convey monumental scale using simple architectural forms and layered sightlines.
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Integrate traversal as a core component of combat and level progression.
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Structure the level around a clear, linear progression with intuitive pathing.
BREAKDOWN
Approach
The approach establishes the fortress as a monumental destination while easing the player into the level's movement systems. Combat is absent, allowing the environment, sightlines, and traversal to establish anticipation before the first major encounter.
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Introduces traversal mechanics before combat complexity.
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Uses distant landmarks to reinforce player orientation.
Courtyard
The courtyard is the first major combat arena, and the introduction to the push-forward combat flow. A spiral path wraps around a central open space, allowing players to continuously change elevation and reposition without relying on dead ends or choke points.
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Multiple elevations remain visually connected in a recognizable way from the first steps into the space
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Encourages aggressive movement over defensive positioning
Keep
The keep explores vertical combat by treating multiple floors as one interconnected arena. Storage, the feast hall, and the upper mural gallery all overlook a shared central space, encouraging players to continuously loop through the elevations while maintaining visual awareness of every layer.
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Mural walkway lets player circumvent the space with long sightlines
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Storage area provides a break from the open space of the feast hall, and provides more ammo
Sanctum
The Sanctum concludes the level by shifting from military architecture to an ancient ritual space. Positioned on its own mountain peak, the space is build around the hell breach the player is tasked to destroy.
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Architectural isolation reinforces narrative importance.
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Circular layout supports continuous combat flow
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Teleporters connect opposing sides of the arena
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Allow for fast advantageous repositioning to compensate for the arena's smaller size
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TOP DOWN MAP
SCREENSHOTS
BLUEPRINTS
Bar-Swing
The bar swing Blueprint can be applied on any static mesh (for example, the chandelier in the inner keep), and uses the player's initial velocity to launch them forward and up.
Vectors are split, added to with exposed variables, and then reassembled to ensure the velocity values can be tuned on a per instance basis. The vector is then clamped to prevent excessive acceleration.
Enemy Manager
Doom Eternal often gates level progress behind defeating all present enemies. To this end, I created an enemy manager.
When enemies are defeated they call an event on the manager which checks the length of an exposed array. When the length hits zero, different things take place depending on exposed boolean variables.
If there is a valid BP_Door actor reference, the door will open. If there is a valid BP_HellGate reference, the gate will become damageable.
This level was built with a gameplay pack I created myself, including the player systems, weapons, and enemy AI. For a deeper dive into the gameplay systems I prototyped, see the Doom Eternal Gameplay Systems page.