Aubrey Rugroden
Truck-Kun is Supporting Me from Another World?! was an original project by Strange Scaffold. I was one of two level designers responsible for a dynamic, replayable mini-open world, pushing and pulling players along for maximum destruction and fun.
You can find the steam page for this game here!
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The Project
TKiSMfAW?! has one large map, which we designed to keep fun for the 3-6 hours of gameplay needed to experience the whole game. Using techniques I've coined as "Lines of Travel" (hijacking the brainstem's desire to take the path of least resistance) as well as utilizing "Points of Gravity" (points of interest with size and complexity correlating with their importance or quality of interaction), we can guide players along novel paths to interesting setpieces or resources passively and actively to keep the fun going from hour zero to credits.
One Map, Many Runs
The nature of a small indie studio necessitates its team members to be able to wear many hats. Designers (like me!) are great for this, since we usually have a solid grasp on every level of a game's development, from conception to prototyping to publish-ready implementation.
Not only was I half of the wonderful level design team, but I also worked with the engineering team to make Truck-Kun's controller more toyetic and to get Objectives serving deliciously. I also made art assets like the tree models, skybox, water shader, and other miscellaneous visual nuggets.
