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Developer: Striking Distance Studios
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Website: callisto.sds.com
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Release Date: December 2, 2022
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Game Description: Set on Jupiter's dead moon Callisto in the year 2320, The Callisto Protocol casts players as Jacob Lee, an inmate in Black Iron Prison. When a mysterious outbreak throws the moon in chaos, Jacob must face his darkest fears to defeat the bloodthristy creatures that stalk him as he unravels the dark mysteries at the heart of the power United Jupiter Company.
Role: Level Designer
Level Content
As a level designer, I took ownership of four levels at various states of development. Some I was involved at the beginning, others I took over at an advanced state of production. In all cases, I did my best to push the level to shipping quality and make decisions to better explore horror. Here are a couple examples.
Below
This was a level that I received after a lot of work had been done on it. I spent most of my time reconfiguring, updating combat and polishing to shippable. However, my greatest contribution to it was the "peel off" mechanic, where a number of blind enemies are stuck to the walls and certain ones may "peel off" if various conditions are met. This information is hidden from players and forces them to either shoot them all off, or carefully crouch by hoping they won't wake up. The inspiration for the idea came from the cinematic where Jacob is hanging upside down and the enemy peels off to investigate the noise (0:08:52). I didn't like how this behavior occurred in the cinematic but not actual gameplay so this was done to address that discrepancy.
I worked with a talented technical designer who did most of the backend work for it and was able to get it into the level despite an aggressive time schedule. It had an unfortunately downstream impact on environment art that wanted to make sure the enemies integrated into the scenes they were in and if possible I would have tried to introduce the idea a bit sooner.
I worked with a talented technical designer who did most of the backend work for it and was able to get it into the level despite an aggressive time schedule. It had an unfortunately downstream impact on environment art that wanted to make sure the enemies integrated into the scenes they were in and if possible I would have tried to introduce the idea a bit sooner.
Habitat
This was a level that I was involved with early on and I soon took full ownership of for a couple years and even oversaw a junior while working on a demo slice of the level, but eventually I was needed on Below and someone else took it to shipping.
Unique elements include the introduction of the wall-climbing, invisible rusher enemies and the epic waterslide moment. The rushers were tricky to design for their unique mobility and I had a lot of fun with using them in unexpected ways, like hanging from trees (1:11:50) or in a tight, smoky hallway (1:05:35). The waterslide went through a few iterations, both in terms of its geometry as well as mechanics. Art requested for Jacob to slide up on the walls as a visual idea, so I decided to make it have gameplay consequences in a particular section by forcing the player to slide up the wall to dodge an obstacle (0:48:30).
Unique elements include the introduction of the wall-climbing, invisible rusher enemies and the epic waterslide moment. The rushers were tricky to design for their unique mobility and I had a lot of fun with using them in unexpected ways, like hanging from trees (1:11:50) or in a tight, smoky hallway (1:05:35). The waterslide went through a few iterations, both in terms of its geometry as well as mechanics. Art requested for Jacob to slide up on the walls as a visual idea, so I decided to make it have gameplay consequences in a particular section by forcing the player to slide up the wall to dodge an obstacle (0:48:30).