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WORK IN PROGRESS

OVERVIEW

Everent is a 3D open-world Exploration Platformer in which the player controls Ollie, a boarder navigating the vast sky world of Stratos aboard a physics-driven hoverboard.

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The core fantasy is expressive aerial and grounded movement, boosting, powersliding, and grinding rails across a world full of points of interest, time trials, and destructible environments. The game draws inspiration from Skate, Rocket League, and Breath of the Wild, combining the feel-first board control of skating games, the Breath of the Wild-style tutorial philosophy, and the exploration-driven open world of sandbox games.

RESPONSIBILITIES

  • Designed, iterated, and set dressed levels

  • Utilized an in-house modular kit to assemble unique, reusable assets

  • Established world partition systems to ensure level designers could work in the same scene simultaneously

  • Led level optimization efforts

DETAILS

  • Release Date: August 2026

  • Team size: 18

  • Genre: Open-World Movement Platformer

  • Role: Level Designer

  • Engine: Unreal 5.7

  • Tools: Sequencer, Modeling Tools, Landscape, Chaos Destruction, PCG, World Partition

LEVEL PLAYTHROUGH

TOP DOWN MAP

SCREENSHOTS

DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

Critical Path

The Skyscraper Graveyard makes use of fallen buildings, broken bridges, and other vestiges of the corrupted city to aid in the player's traversal to their objective. Progression is a back and forth of horizontal and vertical movement, with frequent changes in orientation. 

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  • POI's connect seamlessly to the critical path, and can be accessed from different points

  • The density of buildings in the region frame sightlines and help landmarks stand out against the ruins

  • Exploration is incentivized with time trial POI's and item rewards in routes branching off of the critical path

Time Trials

Time trials are small to medium sized POI's that encourage subsequent run-throughs of the space. Layouts are smaller and demand more precision in character control. This is especially so in this region, which players visit in the late-game.

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  • 2 time trials were implemented into the Skyscraper Graveyard, though I created several more over the course of development 

  • Time trials in this region make use of rail grinding to connect vertical layers, as sudden shifts in player orientation can be too demanding given the tighter layouts

  • Sharp turns make players move methodically through the space, and slanted walls demand precision in orienting the character 

Trial 1

Layering paths challenge mechanical skill and reaction time. 

  • Short paths demand precision over raw speed

  • Complexity in the route provides room for mastery over the course during replays

  • A grind rail alleviates tension at the end, concluding the trial.

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Trial 2

Sharp cornering and a spiral path which winds upward pushes players to get creative in their approach, and encourages trial and error.  

  • Initial path is a long, straight shot to a wall-ride, allowing players to build speed

  • The following platform is at a distance which mandates careful resource management

  • The upside down section has a simpler layout to compensate for the difficulty of being inverted

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LEVEL OPTIMIZATION

HLODs Disabled

Everent - HLOD disabled

HLODs Enabled

Everent - HLOD enabled

Streaming

Used world partition in conjunction with level instancing and editor data layers. ​

  • Editor Data layers sped up loading the game world in editor 

  • Level instancing hierarchy: 

    • Persistent - Player, skybox, terrain, large HLODs

    • Level Instances - created per section of world map​​

    • Packed actors - assembled buildings within instances

HLODs

HLODs were used to cheaply retain important visual language at long distances.​

  • Used the merged layer type for important assets, and the simplified layer type when less detail was needed

  • Significantly less draw calls and lower VRAM usage compared to only traditional LODs

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