Ben 10: Power Trip
Role: Game Designer, Level Designer, Programmer
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Steam, Playstation 4, Xbox One
Developer: PHL Collective
Publisher: Outright Games
Engine: Unity
Project Length: ~1 year
Years: 2019-2020
My Contribution
As a part of a small team wearing many hats, I contributed from the start of the project to ship
- Designed the high level mission flow and created detailed design documents outlining all the major plot points of the game, influenced by extensive research of comparable titles and a thorough understanding of the project goals.
- Using the Unity level editor and in house tools, I constructed the world from the perspective of the mission flow, blocking out all the environments the player would experience across the game world.
- As I constructed the world and mission flow, I implemented those missions, complex conversation trees, combat encounters, and puzzles.
- Worked closely with the other departments to integrate art, animation, sound design, and visual effects.
- Engaged in peer review, accepting critique and running meetings to bring effective solutions to design challenges
- Heavily tested and polished gameplay mechanics, balanced difficulty, and refined missions and level flow to ensure an optimal user experience.
Below are a few examples of the world of Ben 10: Power Trip where I led the level design process from concepts to white-box to final quality, ensuring the end product reflected the initial vision when integrating final art.
Tutorial Plateau
Heatblast Void Level
For each unlock-able alien there is a 'void level' in which they are unlocked. Once acquired, the player must utilize the alien's abilities to solve puzzles, and traverse to the exit.
Swamp final quality
Left is initial whitebox with temporary textures, right is later and some whitebox, and some art assets. The ground was constructed with an in engine modeling tool pro-builder, then exported out and cleaned up by the art team.
Cliff-side walkways
This mission got shifted into this corridor after we decided to shrink the world down a bit, ended up working out to get that nice waterfall shot later on.
Final quality of a small section of a cave, with a torch puzzle requiring the alien Rath to climb up to 2/3 of the torch locations.
Left is whitebox of the starting point of this quest, right is the whitebox cave shown above.
Platforming path up the mountain between high peaks
Whitebox version of the location shown above.
The first time the player is required to pass through here in the story they are only guaranteed to have access to Heatblast, who has a basic double jump. So the intended path through this area requires switching to Heatblast and double jumping on tall cliffs, spiraling upwards from the end of this corridor and across the rope bridges. But when the player returns here later they will have acquired a new alien that can quickly climb straight upwards on the orange rock climbing holds, bypassing the scenic route that was required the first time through.
In addition to short cuts, small alien specific challenges are scattered throughout each region that encourage returning to the area later with a different alien to access to a new reward.
Final quality of the farms.
The farm with some prototype models and some art team assets, also environment whitebox before the world was shrunk.
Void Ruins
Void Ruins are small combat encounters that present a reward upon completion, and sometimes require a specific alien to traverse. Void ruins are present all over the open world, some being strategically placed in the path of story mission objectives to encourage exploration and discovery.
As the player approaches, a series of enemies spawn. When all of the enemies have been defeated, a camera cut to the crystal reveals that the barrier has been removed, and the player must punch the crystal to gain the reward. Void ruin rewards vary from consumables to valuable upgrade points.
