Ben Nichols Game/Level Designer
Nature Walk
This game aims to teach people about nature in a new and engaging way. As the player, you will be placed in a 3D sandbox environment with the aim of finding all the local species. As you walk around the environment you'll hear the calls of different animals and as you get closer the noise will get louder indicating where the animals are. Once an animal has been found a description of the animal you have found will pop up. Your goal is to find all the animals.
Explanation video
Nature Walk
Game Summary:
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Genre: 1st Person, Educational, sandbox game
2021
Solo Project
Type:
Prototype
Development time:
4 months
Role(s):
Level Designer
Games Designer
Audio Designer
Engine:
Unreal Engine 4
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Target Market: People who want to learn more about nature, schools, wildlife groups e.g. National Trust (who I talked to and they showed interest in this game)
Synopsis:
In this game you will be tasked with exploring the local environment searching for all the species that live there.
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Pros:
Flow of game, atmospheric, feedback showed people liked the game.​
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Improvements:
Improve performance, testers with every day computers struggled with performance issues.
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Design pillars:
Educational: Aim was to make a substitute from books and documentaries that had players learn about nature in an interactive way.
Level pillars:
Free and flowing: Wanted to make the player feel free to explore and not tied down to a linear pathway. Achieved via: adding in clearings and pathways in the forest so the player would not get lost but they were free to travel anywhere in the sandbox environment.
Game Development
Design pillars
Audio Design
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Used to navigate player
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Educate players on animals
Education
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Educates players on animals
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Educated players on real location
Audio Design
The audio design in this game is the core pillar of the title. Sound is used to both navigate players around the level and educate players through the sounds these animals make.
(Turn up volume to hear mechanic)
I used UE4 3D sound mechanic to make the animals get louder as the player approaches.
The use of 3D sound allowed me to us this as the primary tool to navigate players around my level.
The animals were strategically placed around the map to encourage exploration.
Additionally pathways are used as landmarks in the level to help players know where they are in the level.
Education
This game is based on a real location North Melbury Woods and aims to educate players about the environment and the species that live their.
North Melbury wood is located just outside of Bideford in Devon. As the game based on this area I made multiple trips to the woodland to get inspiration for the layout of this map.
By exploring the woodland I was able to get a real feeling for the area and this translates in the game with a very natural feeling environment.
(Images above showcase pictures I took with comparison with the game.)
Once an animal is located (through their sound) information about that animal will be displayed. This information is light and compact as to not bore people when reading the information.
Conclude:
With the combination of sound and interactive learning environment this results in a truly engaging interactive experience.
Procedural generation
For the terrain I used procedural generation and layers, which allowed me to easily create a forest in a iterative and non-destructive way.
Production Timeline & Improvements
This is my original development timeline for the game. I mostly stayed on track with the structured weeks expect for week six where I simply ran out of time to add any additional features such as plants
Improvements
- More interactable components:
A great suggestion that was made to me was to add in interactable food to give to the animals
- Including plants/vegetation:
I think this would be a great platform to include information about plants as well as animals and talk about their unique characteristics