GAME TRAILER

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Released in 2015, Vermintide is a co-operative action first person shooter and melee combat adventure set in the End Times of the iconic Warhammer Fantasy universe. Taking place in and around Ubersreik, players assume the role of one of five heroes, each featuring different play-styles, abilities, gear and personality. Working cooperatively, they must use their individual attributes to survive an apocalyptic invasion from the hordes of relentless rat-men, known as the Skaven. Battles take place across a range of environments stretching from the top of The Horn of Magnus to the bowels of the Under Empire.

MY ROLE

Initial level & concept design of five levels, three which were realized without any major changes
Set up the main crescendos and lesser events for the aforementioned levels
Early level art to set the feeling and later beautified the levels I was in charge of
Implemented the first iteration of ingame dialogue scenarios
Scrum Master - team representative, responsible for my team's overall planning

LEVEL: The Horn of Magnus

The Horn of Magnus is the first level of Vermintide and thus the tutorial for gameplay and introduction to the setting and overall game. A colleague put together the initial whitebox and the final result was a collaboration between me and a level artist. It's a long level with about 15-20 minutes of playtime.

Design influences

Being the first level in the game, the players arrive in medias res of the Skaven invasion, chaos has been ongoing for a short time and inhabitants had little time to prepare. So I made the inhabitants defenses haphazard at best and scarce.
The Skaven have yet to settle down on the surface so any sign of their background and where they came from are absent (holes, banners, warmachines, tech, constructions).

Player Objective

After finding that the guardsmen are dead, the players make way for the iconic Horn of Magnus to alarm the people of the invasion.

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SCREENSHOTS

The Jungfreud Platz has Magnus the Pious overlooking a large open plaza to contrast previous tight sections.

The layout and pacing. The corridor, plaza, maze and event terminology refers to our breakdown of spaces at Fatshark.

Alerting the guards at the Guardhouse make up the players first objective. Playtests suggested that players did not grasp the significance of the building. I had a hunch that it had to do with a lack of identity and environmental storytelling.

I added jail cells, banners, leisure areas and signs of people fighting back within the guardhouse.

...The backyard was made into an execution area with plenty of room for spectators

...Leaving the backyard you can find a hog pen with remains of bodies in the soil, to suggest that criminals ultimately turned into hog food.

Slums, lower city - just ahead there's a dumping spot for the people fortunate enough to live on the street above.

The Temple of Ranald is an unusual place to find behind a normal looking door. It's one of many strange locations incorporated from the history of Ubersreik.

Ranaldstrasse is a large street with several off paths to both sides leading to potential pickups and chances to ambush the main Skaven force.

Gate Breaching Event. The players need to take three barrels to the gate, If hit while carried tthey will detonate prematurely.

Only fire and chaos remain in the wake of the Skaven invaders, this environmental storytelling ramps up the further you get, visible from the many vistas throughout the level.

The level crescendo is the sounding of the horn, after which players have to survive an onslaught until a path opens forward.

LEVEL: Black Powder

Black Powder is an event level, meaning the layout revolves around a single level event. Event levels take roughly 5-10 minutes to finish and enemy spawning is handled by scripted events rather than the general spawn director.

Design highlights

This level was an experiment to try out a different approach of our gameplay objective "gathering". I attempted a few approaches before settling on the final result, the layout came to be a vertical approach centered around the drop-off point, allowing players to drop off the objectives without having to carry them that far.
We were in need of a new art set that felt different without craving a lot of time from environment artists. Initially I built the level with beams and similar wooden objects to give it a shanti feeling, which ultimately led to an official "shanty set."

Player Objective

Gather black powder from the a shanty town beneath the massive dwarven bridge of Ubersreik. Players make their way there through few stray invaders from a nearby docking site. However dropping into the site raises the attention of the invaders who aren't too keen on letting them away with it.

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SCREENSHOTS

In order to extend the gameplay area in the middle where most action takes place, I had a ship run aground in the middle of the shanty town, creating a massive traversible floatsam connecting the two sides.

Layout and pacing. The event area is by far the biggest and most complex space, the path leading there is short and offers few choices in order to communicate the level's different nature to players early on.

A banner in red on the docks, marking the presence of Skaven invaders.

The drop-off point is a ferry that's made its way forward through the floatsam, in the middle of the event space.

The players can drop off the Kegs close to the dropoff point without having to carry them far. A key design goal for me with the layout.

LEVEL: Man the Ramparts

Man the Ramparts was one of the shorter levels. Play time about 10 minutes. Being a late installment of the game, the presence of Skaven is more obvious than ever with banners, dead guards and a quintessential Screaming Bell at the very end. The level was showcased in the first newspapers announcing the game as well as articles floating around the internet.

Design highlights

I wanted to highlight the state of the invasion of Ubersreik so on one side there's the outside world, relatively calm and within the walls fire is raging together with the distant screams of remaining defenders.
Several areas of the wall have suffered major damages from the weather and Skaven both, to promote urgency and hopelessness.
I realized that it'd be difficult to try to make it play like a normal level due to it being a fairly straight forward wall. Its straight layout come with few choices for players, however said choices are instead given to the Skaven, able to ascend from its sides and ambush at any time.

Player Objective

The Skaven have raised a screaming bell in the Southern City Gatehouse, making their way there from a nearby tower, the players are to tear it down by breaking its attachments, which in turn raises the attention of its defenders...

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SCREENSHOTS

Harsh weather obstructs long sightlines

Layout and pacing. Despite the layout being straight forward, I've made most of it either tilt and turn in an asymmetrical fashion, contrasting the symmetrical layout of the Event Area.

When lightning strikes, incoming Skaven shine up in the distance.

The Bell is attached in four locations and further fortified with a beam that is currently out of reach. After bringing down the four attachments the weight of the bell brings the beam down to a managable height.

Bringing down an attachment rings the bell, triggering a wave of enemies. The four attachments can be brought down simultaneously if the group decides to split up, a daring yet faster strategy.

The Skaven have torn off massive parts of the Gatehouse in order to raise the bell in a satisfactory state, It allowed me to create and connect paths that originally couldn't be for players and interesting spawnpoints for Skaven.