Hi, it's Jacopo from the team of Al Crepuscolo VR.

We’re excited to share with you some of the visual concepts that we created to inspire the early design decisions for the level design of Al Crepuscolo.

In our game, the player is sitting in a kayak paddling on a body of water surrounded by a pristine forest.

At first, our Art director Gilles Flammang sketched different shapes for the landscape and various point of views and vistas, as you can see in the images below.

We explored various types of landscape, ranging from a large lake, to swamps, and rivers.

Each design came with its own benefits and limits. We really liked the open lake designs, but after play-testing the experience with users, we realized that an open space would often cause the players to feel lost. The lack of detail in the horizon and the traveling distance to reach a distant shore were causing fatigue and loss of interest.

Adding islands around the body of water was a first attempt to break up the space and give multiple viewpoints. While it solved the issues regarding the lack of details in the horizon, it introduced a new obstacle: multiple paths were now available to move forward. This caused orientation problems and made the player miss some encounters that were important for the narrative experience.

We therefore decided to constrain the play area to a more linear shape. This approach allowed the player to focus on the traveling experience through the landscape, and to feel a sense of progress. The player could also orient himself/herself and have meaningful encounters with various animals from the forest around, because the shore is always close to the kayak.

The body of water in Al Crepuscolo is therefore now a combination of narrow passages that open into small lakes with wider vistas. This combination of narrow and wide stretches of landscape creates a dynamic environment, and yet it feels familiar, like paddling through a river. 

That’s all for now, I hope you enjoyed a sneak peek into the design of Al Crepuscolo.

If you liked this article, and you would like to see more of our “behind the scenes”, please let us know in the comments.

Take care of yourself.