Cindy Vu - Game Design Portfolio
Process of "Choco"
Feel free to scroll through the images and see some notes!
Main focus: Environment/Level Design
Concept Art
The first concept was drawn by another teammate.
The original vision for Choco was to create an open-world collecting game reminiscent of "Banjo-Kazooie," while incorporating a soft-shaded aesthetic similar to "Tunic." We liked the idea of making the game somewhat low-poly to give that "nostalgic" vibe like older era games!
To begin, I crafted a small "island" to test the player's movement mechanics and get a feel for Unity's Tileset system. This initial prototype served as the foundation for sketching out the rest of the world, helping us determine how the various regions would connect and flow into one another. Our Producer drew the first concept before I cleaned up the design in the second concept. We wanted to combine several different terrains into one massive island to explore! It felt a little ambitious at first, given we were students with other courses to balance, but we did our best with what we could.
Once we were satisfied with the overall layout, I meticulously refined the design, noting certain distances based on the player character's jump for future reference. This step was crucial in ensuring consistency and "parkour design" when building out the rest of the terrain. Before you ask, yes, I did build it all block by block!
First Area - "Start"
Progress shots of the "starting" area where the player spawns.
For the starting area, the team decided that the player should begin at a small beach and gradually make their way upwards. To subtly guide players through the environment, we decided to add "collectibles" shaped as eggs in clusters of 3 to 5 around the area. We believed this was the best method in encouraging exploration without the need for intrusive text prompts, similar to games like Super Mario Galaxy or Mario Odyssey (my favourites haha).
Since this area was built before the actual concept art was created, there wasn't too much more editing needed to the terrain. Instead, I just built upon it, as demonstrated in the images above. The final image in this set is the full version of this "starting" area. In order to get to the second area, we made a roadblock that would be unlocked after collecting a certain number of egg collectibles. One of my teammates ended up speedrunning his way past the roadblock by parkouring around it, so I had to fix it so that couldn't happen anymore. If he could do it, then everyone's going to at some point and that's not intended (for now)! After fixing that oversight and populating the area, it looked more lively and all good to move on!
Originally, we wanted to have a cool animated cutscene of the roadblock breaking apart into pieces once the goal was achieved, however we ran out of time during development and had to scrap it for the final version.
Second Area - "Snow"
This is where the puzzles start to ramp up at.
From this point on, you can really see that the entire process was done completely by hand. I was practically playing Minecraft the entire time, but it was so much fun that I ended up getting carried away! Stayed up for several hours just blocking away and it turned out so nicely. Worth it.
The way the project worked in Unity was that each layer in the Tileset system was given its own folder following the y-axis (i.e. "Offset 0, "Offset 1", etc.). In this format, the engine renders each layer one at a time rather than as one object entirely, which saves rendering and build times. Since this was an isometric game, the structures were built hollow and from one angle since the player wouldn't see the other angles anyway.
For this section, rather than building upwards, I chose to build downwards towards the first area. This allowed me to determine important sections first of the second area before figuring out how to smoothly connect both areas together. This area was basis for yet another puzzle further to the right, so I had to make sure there was enough building space for me to incorporate that for later on. I attempted to replicate a mountain cliffside here and also built the base of said mountain as well. After decorating with some more trees and rocks, it turned out well!
Third Area - "Mountain"
Progress and inspiration shots for the mountain.
Crafting mountains proved to be a particularly challenging task, especially when sculpting them by hand. My initial attempts were far from perfect. At some point between my attempts, I questioned whether automating the process would be better but chose to stick to my method of manually placing blocks. Perseverance!
The first iteration was rather monotonous, using only one type of block—a snow-capped stone block—which made the mountain feel rather flat. To address this, I started using snow blocks, purely white in colour, and played around with a few other existing block types to add variety. After some looking up some references online and discarding many more attempts, I finally managed to sculpt a mountain formation that both the team and I found satisfying. I owe a debt of gratitude to Minecraft for providing the inspiration that helped me achieve this result.
In the first image, I intentionally left in my scribbles from when I was brainstorming how to seamlessly connect the two areas with a staircase. Initially, I extended the stairs slightly to make them look less perfect (marked in red). You can see I struggled with the yellow in the first image because I had no idea what to put there! It eventually evolved into a small clearing that would later house a puzzle.
Note: The reason why the top of the mountain is melted is because there was a lava pool added later. Do not go near lava in real life.
Fourth/Fifth Area - "Evil Islands"
Progress and in-game shots of the "Evil Islands". The name is just a combination between both areas.
The "Evil Islands" is composed of several mini islands that extend from the second area, the snow plateau, as shown in the first image. Additionally, there is another plateau teeming with enemies and collectibles that we affectionately named the "Evil Plateau" as shown in the second image. Instead of connecting the two plateaus with another staircase, we decided to create a mini challenge where players must parkour across the mini islands (the fourth area) to reach the Evil Plateau (the fifth area).
The isometric camera in the fourth area proved to add much more difficulty—so much so that I couldn't clear it myself during playtest sessions. It made it difficult to check where the player character was, due to the lack of shadows since there was little land to cast them. The problem was, adding more tall islands would make the area just... Overwhelmed and obstruct the nice water shader we had. How add more without ruining the view? Then it hit me. I suggested adding moving platforms which took the form of clouds to fit in with the environment. While players would still need to navigate onto these platforms, they proved to be a much easier alternative to the original design, as they wouldn't have to jump too far.
Since the fifth area was intended to scale the difficulty up compared to other areas, we made several adjustments to evoke a "foreboding" atmosphere. For instance, we set the area change to "night" by altering the lighting and adding a colour filter on top once players passed a certain checkpoint. Some models were also replaced with more ominous ones, such as dead trees and different enemy models.
Extras - "Puzzles & Collectibles"
While exploring a vast environment can be exhilarating, the experience quickly loses its charm without any challenges. To keep players engaged, the game features a variety of puzzles scattered throughout the world. Each puzzle, once solved, rewards the player with a giant egg collectible, which adds towards a final goal that allows players to beat the game. Like many open-world games, these puzzles can be tackled in any order, offering players the freedom to explore and solve at their own pace.
One puzzle that went through a lot of iterations, was the ice maze that's located in the second area, the snow plateau. Originally, I had designed this maze to be above ground, similar to nice mazes built up with ice blocks found at winter festivals (there were some in my local area sometimes!). The problem was, as seen in the third and fourth images, that the ice texture made it very difficult to navigate through the maze and know exactly where you were. There was a lot of guessing that had to be made, leading to random inputs rather than actual navigating.
I asked myself, "how do I make it so players don't ragequit and try to cheat their way out?" Eventually, I settled on building the puzzle below ground level so players could have a bird's eye view (hah) of the maze as shown in the fifth image. This made it so players could see their location better and navigate easier. I even decided to make it so the maze was actually under a frozen lake so they couldn't jump over and cheat. Perfect environment integration!
Overall, it was fun designing the puzzles in each area. If I could go back and continue working on this project and upgrade it, I would!
Feel free to try the game out here!
