In this level, the player meets his allies for the first time alongside some of the game’s villains. I placed many game moments where the Transformers were fighting in close proximity to the player to bring a great sense of scale and to make players understand their part in the fight early on in the game.

As the first level, I wanted the player to experience many fights between the Transformers and have a few key interactions with them. A fun way to involve the player was to make Grimlock use his signature fire attack on Barricade while he is hiding behind a car. The player can shoot at the destructible car to help Grimlock destroy it and leave Barricade vulnerable. Succeeding in this timed event rewards the player with a satisfying animation of Grimlock continuing his relentless attack against Barricade and unlocks an alternate path for the player to take in which they will encounter an additional scene.

To make this level feel like a city, I added many elevations and turns to make the paths feel more urban. There are a few instances in which the player goes inside tunnels or rides along elevated roads. This wide variety of different locations in the city added a feeling of progression to the level and avoided any area feeling like it is overstaying its welcome.

Introduction of some of the Main villains and Allies
Many fight between the characters
Different elevations, locations and paths for the player’s movement that all fit with the urban setting.

In the second level, the player is accompanied with his ally Bumblebee. They need to reach a power plant and uncover the Decepticon operations inside.

The location of this level is inside a large desert plain continuing on from where the player beat the first level’s boss. Because of the deserted nature of the environment, I made most of the player’s paths flat with a few wide turns. This allowed me to increase the player speed dramatically without causing motion sickness which helped with showing the immense depth of a vast desert and allowed a lot of space dedicated to a large field of solar panels. I decided to have these solar panels fields at the entrance of the power plant to show human technology and then slowly display a progression of it mixing with Decepticon technology as the player gets closer to the plant. This gave a constant sense of progression and highlighted the narrative that the Deceptions have taken control of the plant. At the end of the level, we created a field of Decepticons solar panels that were set up similarly to the human ones seen earlier but while also heavily contrasting it in terms of scale and technology. These large panels at the end of the level were a great setting to have the boss battle and it made the looping of the environment much easier.

Straight paths and high movement speed gave a good scale of how big the desert environment was.
Transition of human technologies towards the larger in scale Decepticon technologies worked natively and gave a sense of progression.

This level is one of the 2 in the game that are mainly designed to be completely vertical. This was to diversify the type of levels and to make the player move differently while working within the limitations of being on rails. For this level you descend deeper into the deceptions base on earth uncovering their secrets while the next vertical level sees you ascend on the transformer’s home planet ready with an understanding of what they are scheming.

The player starts at the surface of the Mine and continually goes down until he reaches the bottom. The many tunnels in the main shaft of the mine allowed for fun encounter placements where I was able to place some single enemies that would ambush the player from almost all sides. This made the player look around the sides of his environment more than previous levels while keeping the center reserved for the level’s main encounters. I also placed some docile enemy NPCs crawling on the mine walls to add sell the idea that the mine has been completely overtaken by the villains and give a sense of being trapped and surrounded.

At the bottom of the mine, the player faces one of the most iconic villains of the series: Megatron. This Extended boss encounter with one of the main villains worked to help set up a mid way point through the game and prepare the player for a dramatic change as the game moves from Earth to Cybertron and shifts its visuals dramatically.

Vertical level where the player move downwards inside a Mine.
Small tunnels entrances allowed for fun ambushed enemies placement.
Iconic boss fight with 2 phases.

This is the first level set on Cybertron. The player arrives in the Sewers of Cybertron after chasing one of the villains who tried to escape through a portal.

The goal of this level was to have a contrast between the environment on Earth and the ones we would find on the extra terrestrial fictional planet of Cybertron. On Earth, the player finished while moving downwards, so we wanted them to start below ground and move upwards during the Cybertronian levels as a constant sign of progression throughout the second half of the game. With this in mind I designed this level to begin with the player moving forward but ascending up a ramp at key moments.

To emphasize the shift of difficulty in this second half of the game, I introduced more powerful variants of the enemies players are used to. This made a difficulty spike for player reaching the mid game level and allowed them to gain a boost of currency to buy better upgrades moving forward.

First level on the planet Cybertron.
Horizontal level where the player move upwards towards the surface.
Difficulty spike with a new more powerful variant of enemies.

This is the second vertical level of the game. The player is moving upwards to reach the location of the final level.

In this level, the player is in a much larger and open area compared to the previous level. The ally and the villain that accompany you both have the ability to fly. It made it possible to have the characters flying around the city at high speed causing mass destruction while still being easily visible, as well as fly extremely close to the player when needed.

In the early days of prototyping the level, I had an idea where the player could have a free fall moment during the level. I found that falling down at high speed in VR really made a unique gameplay moment opportunity and would allow a change of pace in the level. It was a challenge making this moment comfortable for players in VR, but adjusting the deceleration speed of the decent and adding a character to catch the player and offer a stationary attention grabbing target removed these issues.

Second vertical level of the game.
Many game moments where the player can see the characters fight between themselves at long and close range.
Free fall game moment where the ally character saves the player.

This is the last level of the game. The player has now reached the city at the top of Cybertron. All of the player’s allies and the villains that managed to escape earlier are battling to settle things in this climax.

As the final level, we wanted to bring back as many characters as possible to fight alongside the player. The movement of the player varies in elevation and turns to make it feel like the busy pathways that the Decepticons would use on their home planet. I kept the paths suspended in the air to keep the feeling that the player is now at the very top of the planet and to have a grand sense of scale looking down on the sci-fi citied below while battling the enemies.

The final fight of the game is not one, but 2 boss fights where it is revealed that one of the secondary villains was the mastermind behind the Decepticons evil plans. Then end boss fight needed to be adjusted to support both fights while keeping the reveal as an unexpected game moment. During my time reworking this final fight from the ground up I felt it was the perfect opportunity to take what worked best with the game until this point and push it as far it could go. I made the sense of scale greater than it has been at any point before this and focused on interactive moments, cinematic presentation and character moments.

Final battles between the characters and their fight climax.
Suspending roads to add a grand sense of scale.
Back to back boss battles with a twist in the story told during gameplay.

The project needed to have an arcade mode of the game to give the players extra content to do after completing the campaign mode. This mode had much less time and resources dedicated to developing it. I was tasked to design the arcade to have a gameplay loop that would push the player to keep coming back time and time again.

I designed this mode to have the player choose 1 class and then challenged them to survive as many waves of enemies as possible. After defeating a certain number of enemies, a random boss from the campaign would appear and fight the player. After defeating the boss, the player is rewarded with a choice of 3 different random upgrades to choose from. After choosing one, the location changes and more difficult enemy waves spawns in. This gameplay loop continues until the player health reaches zero. After being defeated a scoreboard appears and the game saves the player’s high score.

This mode cycles through 3 looping environment maps where the player moves forward at high speed infinitely. The high speed added more excitement to the gameplay without having motion sickness and the looping environment made it that the player is able to play this mode at his own pace without being penalized.