Iskandar - The Spear of Truth.
Level variety
The game has 6 levels. The Village and its outskirts, the Forest, Forest Dungeon, Desert, Desert Dungeon and Dark Lord Dungeon. All the levels are very different from each other, even those that are dungeons present a more puzzle-styled design. However, it was important to maintain our philosophy throughout all of them. Lots of exploration, action (combats) and puzzles are the pillars of our level design.
Narrative storytelling
The level design was strongly connected to the narrative. The game world was suffering an invasion from the enemy. Parts of the world were destroyed, and some others were intact. The player does not know this at the beginning. So it was important to design a welcoming first level and then from there slowly tell with the environment what was really happening.
Level Design Documentation
The documentation was a vital part of our work. As the lead, I made sure that it was helpful and clear for all of those that had to go through it. Specific details about the levels such as beats, flow or layout are shown there. Having this strong base definitely helped a lot with the final blocking of the levels. Down below there are 2 examples of this.
Puzzle blockout.
This is a short example of the way I used to design and set up the puzzles. It was important to test frequently the puzzles before they were programmed. That way we could see if they were likely to be good or not.