Hi! My name is Eric Chocholacek and I’m deeply passionate about video games.
My devotion began after beating my first game, “Crash Team Racing”, on the PS1; I had never been filled with such joy and excitement as when I beat Nitrous Oxide in that final race. As the credits rolled, I dropped the controller and raced up the stairs to wake my mom (an hour before her weekday alarm nonetheless) to share my excitement. I’m sure she was only wondering why I was up so early, but I knew from then on that I wanted to play and complete as many games as possible to keep that feeling alive.
Fast-forward to High School, where music and games were my escape from what I considered a boring reality. I didn’t really fit in and every day felt like a struggle until I could get home and jump into the next adventure my console had in store for me. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do after graduation until I was contacted by a school in Vancouver that offered game design and development courses, and I was instantly sold. Me? Be able to make my own games and bring my ideas to life? Sign me up!
I initially thought that Game Design was the path that would help me achieve my goal of sharing my experiences with others, but as I progressed through school, it became clear to me that I wanted to pursue a career in Level Design. While Game Designers have their own tools to share emotion, I feel that Level Designers have a more direct link to Players. As someone who sometimes struggles to get ideas across with just words, being able to craft unique spaces and utilize a multitude of skills and techniques to lead a Player through your hand-crafted world in the way you intended, and to feel what you intended, is like a dream come true.
Video games were my escape and I’ll always keep making experiences that help others feel those emotions I felt after beating my first game. I’m currently working as a Level Designer at Cubit Studios, and my passion for video games and level design has never been stronger.
I start all of my designs with an idea, most commonly a spontaneous idea that can come to me from anywhere; movies, music, books, nature, conversations, interactions, daydreams, etc. (I follow the same process for my deliberate ideas generated with intention, but I find the spontaneous ideas to be more fun to explore in my personal projects). I then take this idea and start molding it in my notebook by defining the Setting, Location, and Theme of the level I want to create.
During this phase I like to focus on writing down notes about the environment of the setting, deciding if the level should be interior or exterior, urban or rural, current time/era or the future/past, generally thinking of what the surrounding environment will look like and what sort of emotion/theme I want to derive from the location. With these thematic notes completed, I begin thinking of the Purpose/Goal of the level.
Defining the Purpose/Goal of the level first allows me to work backwards and figure out how the Player will eventually get to their goal. I find this helps me define a possible feature set that I want to work with/implement and begin thinking of fun and interesting ways to traverse and interact with the environment defined in the previous step.
With all of the above defined, I then think about what interactions could occur in the level and plot out simple beat/pacing and bubble charts to quickly map out the area and ideas I have.
My next step is to gather reference images and preferably create a mood board for the level. I usually try to gather 70 – 100 references for the general environment, lighting, visual style, prop reference, and will often do “deeper dives” to find 5-10 reference images for specific types of rooms or set pieces I want to include. With references gathered, I scribble out 3-5 paper maps focusing on focal points and landmarks until I find a flow I feel compliments my chosen mechanics, themes, and goal and further define it into a digital format.
On larger projects, I would then take all of the information I’ve defined so far and begin creating a fully fleshed out Level Design Document to share with other members of my team so they’re aware of what I want to do with the level.
With a map and general idea(s) defined, I jump into the editor and begin blocking out my map, creating metric blocks/pieces I can use throughout the map to ensure a uniform sense of scale, playtesting constantly to ensure my level plays as I intended. I begin blocking out by placing the basic geometry of the level (floors, walls, ceilings, stairs, etc) then begin implementing gameplay and traversal mechanics. After testing to ensure everything still works as intented, I move on to adding the key scripted events and encounters based on my beat chart. I also like to take the extra time to implement a basic form of lighting and post processing to help establish the mood and atmosphere of my level. I find this helps keep my level themed while I’m building it, as well as helps to sell my ideas to colleagues that may be unaware of the full scope of my level.
Once I have a playable blockout I’m comfortable with showing, I reach out for feedback and iterate based on what I receive. This process repeats several times until I feel I’ve reached the limit of the idea in a blockout phase and need the project to advance so I can fine-tune the layout, interactions, or any timing of scripted events.
As the project progresses, I begin further defining the shape of the level by working with artists or my available assets to focus on framing/composition to aid in the invisible hand design of my level. I also use this time to work with other teams to ensure my ideas are clear and work they’re helping me with matches the theme/style of the level.
After that, it’s time to continue to iterate, polish, and fix bugs as I receive final assets/code for the game. Then playtest, fix more bugs, panic a bit, then release!