Seafeud

Level Designer / Artist | 50 Team Members | Unreal Engine 5 | Published Title

Seafeud is a 3D arcade racing game for PC where players race on fish through cities that have sunk to the bottom of the sea. Instead of choosing the fish initially, players get to flexibly change the fish they ride during the race to gain extra advantages.

Play on Steam

My Contributions

Express-wave Track

Designed early-stage track prototype
Built the white box of the prototype level.
Blocked out the initial environment for the prototype level.

Night Fish-trict Track

Brainstormed and blocked out the initial environmental theme.
Designed and built the entire track's environment, including props, lights, and conveyance. Refined and polished the final environment.
Fixed the track's performance issues with programmers.
Fixed bugs that caused the player to fly outside the track.

Responsibilities

Responsibility 1

Prototyping

Responsibility 2

Environment Building

Responsibility 3

Communication / Playtesting

Responsibility 1: Prototyping

Brainstorm & Initial Design - When the team started to design the track, we created the track according to our ideas individually, then voted for the elements we liked in each design. Afterward, I organized the team to discuss combining all the wanted elements to create an initial track design.
After we landed on the same design, I drew a final map (the map on the right side) for the team to reference.

Most of the critical design parts of the initial design stayed in the final launched track.

The Y Junction with Height Difference

The Figure 8 "Air" Track

Responsibility 2: Environment Building

I created one of the three tracks, Night Fish-trict track's environment, from the initial block out to shippable quality. My responsibilities Included:

Placing modular kit buildings and environmental props to decorate the track and its background.
Adding and adjusting lights and conveyance props to help guide the players in a fast-paced racing game.
Communicating with teammates to adjust environmental decorations according to changes in track design.

The Initial Block Out

The Polished Map at Launch

Implementation of the Landmark

The fortune cat is the landmark of the Night Fish-trict track. Players should recognize the cat from the starting line, then race around it to reach the next area. This fortune cat should serve as a sign to signify to players that they have finished another lap.

Before

The landmark is half-covered by the track.

Beginning with the landmark, I referenced Night Fish-trict's concept art provided by the artist and game designer. With our limited assets, I made the track look similar to the art concept while still using level design techniques to support gameplay.

The Actual Track

Level Design Techniques

In a fast-paced racing game, it is essential that the player knows where they need to go next quickly. To achieve that, I used multiple-level design techniques to help guide the player, including leading lines, textures, lights, and gates.

Leading Lines

Strong Light

Leading Lines

Arrow Texture

Before & After Comparisons

Responsibility 3: Communication / Playtesting

I also used my experience as a graphic designer to find and set up reference picture boards for the Night Fish-trict track to help communicate with the art team.

I separated each type of prop into different boards to ensure artists could find the needed information quickly.
When I updated the asset request sheet, I added links that directly landed on the specific board to save artists' time.

Reuse of Art Assets

With our limited time and artist power, each track could only have 5 unique assets including the track meshes. When the team was writing art asset requirements, I suggested asking for a three-part formed Tori gate. When decorating the track, this Tori gate asset is used in multiple ways: gates, debris, and pillars.

As Gates

Playtesting & Bug Report/Fixing

During the development process, I playtested multiple tracks and tried various weird actions to find and report bugs that affected gameplay. Some bugs included: players dropping out of the track, player respawn loops, and racing laps not being counted.

In the beta milestone, I was responsible for fixing any reported bugs on the Night Fish-trict track that affected gameplay. I fixed, in total, 12 bugs and added detailed screenshots and descriptions on how it was fixed.

Gallery

Postmortem

What Went Well

We successfully launched the game! We designed and established the game in 4 months and published it on Steam.
As a small team with only three people, we separated and finished tasks effectively.
During the development process, we effectively playtested and asked each other for feedback.

What Went Wrong

In early milestones, we didn't design tracks based on fun but on themes, which led us to throw away a lot of work. But the environment theme only improved when we focused on creating a fun track.
We lacked communication with artists to know how many assets we would get for our track. I initially designed an interior market for part of the track, but later on, was notified that we would not have any interior assets.
- I quickly brainstormed and changed the environment using the existing assets. But still, I've learned that it's important to communicate with the artists before adding new environmental decorations.

What I Learned

Communication is the key to good teamwork. When we worked on making changes to the track, we usually made changes in different track sections and actively updated each other when we finished.
Don't hesitate to throw things away. Try and fail fast is the best way to iterate.
A good pipeline updates everyone so they are on the same page. But it is important sometimes to break the pipeline to bring up emergencies to the entire team.