Edge of Hell (2025)
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Hi-Concept: Rip and tear through your enemies as the all-powerful demon from Hell, Abaddon, in this thrilling first-person action game!
Team Type: College Team Project
Team Size: 8 People
Software I Used: Unity, Milanote, Google Workspace, Discord, GitHub
My Role(s): Project Lead, Lead Game Designer, Lead Level Designer
My Main Responsibilities:
Designed, constructed, and populated x3 diverse in-game levels, as well as x4 stylized boss arenas, in a 3D space within the Unity game engine.
Mindfully crafted the game’s pacing within the levels to ensure maximum player enjoyment.
Utilized various lighting techniques to strike a careful balance between immersion and performance cost.
Infused environmental storytelling at every possible turn, as well as being responsible for populating the level with art assets.
Promoted player choice at every turn, allowing the player to play the game in a variety of styles.
Structured & planned the overall flow of the game, including weaving the narrative into the levels, ensuring maximum utilization of game mechanics throughout the game, and creating a deliberate collectible system that encouraged world exploration and silently guided the player as a tutorial would.
Managed the day-to-day managerial responsibilities such as work distribution, hosting and scheduling meetings, organizing and maintaining services such as Milanote and Google Drive, writing meeting notes, managing project timelines, and cultivating cross-disciplinary teamwork.
Designed engaging game mechanics and kept the team’s vision of the games consistent across the board to ensure clarity and quality.
Collaborated with art and programming teams to create a fully equipped 3D-2D hybrid action game over the course of nearly a year, hitting all deadlines with pinpoint accuracy.
Play the Game: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-hEPNc8E_svUXDWTr4CoxaqYnQIgpEUE?usp=sharing
Read the GDD: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16cOCx5Noazj8acTUU6PaQBujMlBcphmj?usp=sharing
My Roles in Development Explained
My Primary Roles:
Project Lead: Responsible for the game’s overall direction, creative vision, work distribution, and timeline management.
Gameplay Design: Responsible for designing the game’s moment-to-moment gameplay as well as core game mechanics.
Level Design: Responsible for designing, building, and populating all of the game’s 3 main levels, boss arenas, and a Gym level where developers could work on pieces of the game in isolation. Also included was pacing design, puzzles, platforming, collectibles, tutorials, enemy placements, item placements, and more.
My Secondary Roles:
Narrative Design: Responsible for crafting the game’s larger narrative & implementing the game’s narrative beats into the game world through mostly environmental storytelling techniques.
Technical Design: Responsible for designing and crafting certain complex level ingredients.
Environment Artist: Responsible for thoughtfully implementing and arranging nearly all art assets, 3D & 2D, throughout the game world to craft visually interesting scenes and thought-provoking environmental storytelling.
Lighting: Responsible for arranging the game’s lighting to carefully balance performance and visual fidelity on a case-by-case basis to craft visually striking scenes.
Audio Implementation: Responsible for choosing and implementing all of the game’s soundtrack pieces as well as matching SFX to in-game objects.
Game Playtester: Responsible for extensive bug-testing and playtesting of the entire game in a Quality Assurance (QA) capacity to ensure a pleasant player experience.
An “Edge of Hell” Memoir
Edge of Hell’s Level Flow, Narrative Influences, & Overarching Game Design Philosophy:
The Short Version:
The Entire Game’s Goal = To provide the player with the opportunity to fulfill a power fantasy. This centered around conquering the realm of Purgatory through the eyes of a powerful demon named Abaddon. Abaddon uses a mixture of magic-based skills and visceral melee-focused combat via his Mystical Scythe to defeat various monsters and beasts. Fun, fast-paced, forward-facing action with puzzles and platforming mixed in for sections that further engage the player’s critical thinking skills all come together to make for a wonderfully satisfying time!
Level 1 (Infernus) = Linear Volcanic Hellscape Tutorial World
Level 2 (Ergus) = Complex & Dangerous Desert Temple That Tests Your Skills
Level 3 (Tundrus) = A Guantlet of Mastery, Snowy Ascent To The Finale
Boss Arenas = Up Close & Personal Gladitorial Colleseums for 1:1 Brawls
The Gym = Developer Playground for Testing Game Mechanics & Metrics
Project Management
Throughout the development of the game, I led production logistics, scheduling, meeting facilitation, and more across the various disciplines. I was put in charge of the game’s overall creative vision, team coordination, and gameplay systems from concept to final release. Following the success of Reap What You Sow and my role in successfully coordinating the team’s disciplines very effectively, my peers nominated me for the role of Project Lead for our next endeavor. I accepted the role to lead our team over the next year to design and develop the prequel to RWYS, Edge of Hell. From the beginning, I shared my creative vision with the team and after some civil open-floor discussion with the everyone involved, the plan for EOH began to take proper form. I laid out my ideas for what type of genre we should go for, landing on a style inspired by the original Doom of the 90’s but instead of guns, we sought to focus on melee combat and some platforming elements. With the decision to make a prequel to RWYS, I decided to focus the game around the demon Abaddon during his prime, rather than the weak trapped soul he was in our previous game. I sought to make Edge of Hell a player’s dream power fantasy adventure, and I would say I succeeded. There is simply no way I can convey every little thing I ever did to keep this game’s development on track from my role as Project Lead; however, I can confidently say that my team had total trust in my abilities at the helm. Their trust in my decisions spanning cut content, imposed deadlines, and creative choices enabled us to successfully produce a “CCC Hall of Fame Worthy Game” - Anthony Cartelle (2025). I had faith in my team’s abilities and they in turn had faith in me. I am forever grateful to have worked with such a wonderful team of people and if they ever read this, I wish you guys the best of luck in your future endeavors!
The Decision To Go “3D-2D Hybrid”
Knowing full well the strengths and weaknesses of my team, I pitched a 3D-2D hybrid approach for our next game. We would use 2D art assets for enemies and player-focused things due to my art team having much more experience in the realm of sprite work rather than 3D modeling. The programming & design teams started the year wanting to get very ambitious, so we opted to take the game into the 3rd dimension, which increased the workload of my programmers as well as myself being Level Designer. I chose to keep the game in Unity due to my team’s familiarity with the engine. Developing a game is hard enough within an engine you know and we did not have the time to learn a new one with strict deadlines to hit. This decision I made would end up saving our bacon, as EOH’s development would prove extremely challenging due to our set goals.
Meetings & Team Culture
Over the game’s entire production cycle, I was in charge of planning, coordinating, scheduling, and hosting our meetings. Every week for the entire duration of the project, I hosted at least one in-person meeting and usually two to three online meetings. The in-person meetings often focused around the weekly tasks, upcoming deadlines, group discussions regarding creative choices, updates from each discipline to the others on their progress, requests from person-to-person on assets they may need in the coming future, and team-building time that allowed the group to form our culture of hard work, ambitious ideas, and a mentality that centered on “We’re here to make a great game first, everything else second.” Everyone wanted to test their mettle and put forth the best design, art, and programming work that they could muster. Often times, I would even physically act out what I was looking for in animations, much to everyone’s collective amusement. Online meetings were often one of two styles. Sometimes they were quick supplemental update meetings for when the climate quickly shifted and things needed addressing. Other times the meetings were often programming focused meetings where myself and the programming team would spend upwards of six or more hours a couple nights a week chipping away at the mountain of work to get Edge of Hell over the finish line. I vividly remember reflecting on how much time my team had invested into this project as we wrapped up an eight hour long online meeting, largely dedicated to bug-fixing. Though we never earned class credit for those online meetings, I took a lot of pride in the fact that our dedication superseded the desire to simply get good grades in the game design class. It was also in online meetings where, in order to convey the general vibe of certain ideas, I would do my best to sketch out very rough looking approximations of things in Microsoft Paint, which many found simultaneously amusing and surprisingly helpful.
Timelines, Deadlines, & Keeping The Vision Alive
Since this game was subject to various deadlines to meet for in exchange for grades, I as project lead had to keep everyone, including myself, incredibly organized throughout the entire development cycle. I created a master google drive folder with dozens of subfolders designed to keep everyone’s assets organized for easy access. I wrote up our copious amounts of documents, including but not limited to: the GDD, meeting notes, development plans, schedules, timelines, work distributions, to-do lists, asset requests, narrative beats, QA logs, content ideas, and outlines. All of my efforts in the managerial department were to keep the team on the same page regarding EOH’s overarching vision & goals. I made sure the boring, yet essential, background work got done so that the creatives on my team could focus 100% on the task in front of them.
Managing Scope & Cutting Content
One of my responsibilities as project lead was to know when it was necessary to cut content or shift the team’s priorities in order to meet deadlines. It was definitely one of the most mentally and emotionally taxing tasks I had to do during the development of Edge of Hell. Even though there were a quite a couple times in development when I had to put my foot down and make an executive decision about production, I made sure to carefully deliberate each choice, evaluate all my options, and seek out input from each and every one of my team before finally making a game-spanning decision. Three examples come to mind that had me really feeling the weight that my decisions carried: the scope of the third level of the game had to be unfortunately massively scaled back due to impending deadlines, the three planned minibosses between each level ended up being consolidated into Cerberus appearing multiple times under new themes rather than three totally separate enemy types due to time constraints, and an entire enemy type had to be scrapped due to the immense amount of resources their development was consuming at the detriment of the rest of the game. Shown in the image above is that scrapped enemy: The Demonic Jelly, or as he was lovingly referred to as internally, “The Slime”. The slime had a troubled development history. Originally conceived as an enemy type meant for parkour-heavy environments, he never quite got his moment to shine, as the game shifted direction towards a heavier focus on combat rather than platforming. The programming team also frequently ran into trouble with getting his mechanics to behave properly. To save everyone’s sanity, he was scrapped. He never made it into the game as he was originally envisioned in the Game’s GDD; however, an easter egg involving his completed sprite can be found in the final boss arena if you look up into the stands of spectating enemies. Make sure to say hi to him before you roll the credits!
Game Design
When Edge of Hell was conceptualized, I pitched a game style similar to the original Doom from the 90's. The gameplay was designed to be similar to Doom's action-packed push-forward approach, but with a melee & magic focused twist. The main character's moveset was tailored to fit this agenda and the layout of the game followed suit. Abaddon is equipped with a quick melee slash to get up close and personal with his foes, a ranged fire attack to interact with hard-to-reach enemies as well as environmental objects, and lastly, a mystical block ability to add defensive depth to the combat system. Each enemy was designed as a counterpart to Abaddon's base moveset. The sword-bearing Brutes can go toe-to-toe with the quick melee attack, the cannon-wielding Devastators shoot plasma bullets that can be parried by the player's block action, and the Hellbats can be shot down with a well-aimed fireball attack. The fireball can even shatter locked doors and be used to interact with movable platforms, adding an additional way to interact with the game world. The game is also designed in such a way where this core moveset, as well as the unlockable additional abilities, are used in all the game's puzzles. Every design choice within Edge of Hell was made with purposeful and deliberate care. Explained below are two crucial aspects of the game’s design I focused on during development.
Player-Enemy Dynamics Explored
Each of the game’s enemies can be interacted with in a variety of ways. You can use your melee slash to deal massive damage, your Hellfire ranged projectile to hit airborne foes, and your block to parry incoming projectiles. Abaddon’s moveset, and the game by extension, was designed to give the player a full toolkit that enabled them to fight however they wanted to. Player choice is important to me as a designer.
Abilities With More Than One Use-Case
I wanted Abaddon’s abilities to be like swiss army knives. Able to be used in not only combat, but throughout the entire game. I designed it so Abaddon’s Hellfire can open gateways, interact with platforms, and more to give the player a more engaging experience. I also made it so the player could redirect an enemy’s projectile via a well-timed parry to either shoot the enemy back with their own attack or even use it to solve puzzles!
World Design
As I developed and designed Edge of Hell, I quickly realized the importance of several aspects that I had previously never considered. Among them was chiefly how the game world’s lighting systems influenced the atmosphere & performance of the game. Balancing the lighting of the scenes became a vital part of my job, with the battle of performance vs beauty weighing heavily over me in each level. Choosing to implement baked vs real-time lighting depending on the scenario was a decision whose impact would be felt on the player's game performance. I carefully and deliberately lit each scene in such a way where they could look stunning and simultaneously grant the player as much FPS performance as possible. Environmental storytelling quickly became one of my favorite tasks throughout development. Designing mini-stories through careful set dressing and placement of environment art always delighted me. Games like Bioshock and Elden Ring tell entire narratives silently through environmental storytelling, and I made sure Edge of Hell was no different.
Lighting The World
Learning how and when to use baked lighting truly saved the performance of Edge of Hell. Carelessly placing all real-time lighting without thought can tank a game’s performance tremendously. I had to learn this lesson the hard way during development, but I’m a much better game developer, level designer, and lighting artist for it. One example of deliberate lighting would be how I carefully arranged colored lights, like vibrant oranges and reds, to simulate active lava in Level 1, which really enhanced the ambiance and mood of the area. There were also times like in Level 2 where the main door is cast in a brilliant real-time golden light to emphasize its importance. I lit every scene with purpose.
Environmental Storytelling
One of my favorite ways to convey narrative side plots through games is via silent environmental storytelling. Games like Elden Ring and Bioshock are my inspirations for how I construct my mini-scenes. The shown example tells the story of a humanoid creature who was sacrificed in this hellish landscape. Their body lay headless nearby a sacrificial star, etched into the bricks of Infernus. As the area glows and hums with mystery, the player wonders whether the humanoid was crawling away from the sacrifice when they were beheaded, or if the perpetrators chose to drop the head into the lava as some part of the ritual. I love leaving that up to the player to interpret exactly how a scene might have gone down.
From Linear, Guided Pathways …
Level One started off as a very linear guided world to teach the player how the game worked. Level 2, as shown above, took this a step further with its trust in the player by branching out into a myriad of interconnected hallways that led to puzzle rooms. These puzzle rooms, upon completion, would reward the player with the three keys necessary to unlock the main doorway. I actually made sure that the three glowing symbols atop the doorframe were linked to the three physical keys found around the map. If the player collected the key that matched the symbol on the top of the triangle, the glow would disappear. Obtain all the keys, which are saved even upon death, and all three glows disappear, opening the door. This complexity really engages the player’s mind and was delightful to design.
… To Vast, Expansive Open-Worlds
When it came time to design the final level of the game, Level 3, I decided that its design could be a lot more open-world due to my faith in the player by this part of the game. No player wants to be handheld in perpetuity, and I made sure to allow for exploration and freedom of choice for where to go. Level 3 was also a vertically designed level, as opposed to a traditional horizontally designed level. This was to symbolize the ascent up towards the final boss of the game, Azrael the Fallen Angel. I made sure to add an elevator at the end where they could ascend the giant waterfall that has been visible and persistent throughout all three layers of the level. Ascending up the waterfall’s cascading beauty gives the player a moment of rest before the pacing gets dialled to 11 in the final boss fight.
Level Design
Each level in the game started off as a design on grid paper along with an idea. The sections of the game had to have a purpose, and they had to fulfill a certain goal, such as being a tutorial, an area of freedom for exploration, or a mission designed to test the player's mastery of their skills. I would iterate on the layout over and over until I thought it was worthy to move on to the blockout / greybox stage. I would then hop into Unity and begin building the rough geometry, as well as test how the flow and pacing felt. If level ingredients needed to be built to enhance the player experience, I built them. If playtesting revealed that there were too many enemies or not enough items, I adjusted it. If the level felt confusing to navigate, I would iterate on the paths available to the player. Once I was satisfied with the feel of the level, I would begin placing final ingredients, distributing collectibles, implementing art assets, and conducting final playtests. This iterative process kept each of my levels well-paced and ensured the player would have fun exploring them.
Grid Paper Drafts
Each of the game’s levels began as detailed sketches on grid paper. I would always start with a main target goal in mind, such as the level being a tutorial world, the level needing to give the player a feeling or emotion, or the level needing to act as a mainly narrative beat vs a combat section. During this time, crafting the main objective locations, laying out the rough flow, and the placements of level ingredients were front and center. I also kept in mind narrative beats and gameplay mechanics when designing.
Iterate, Iterate, Iterate
One thing that I initially struggled with during development was over-committing to translating my paper designs to my blockouts in a 1:1 fashion. I learned that the key to good level design, and by extension all game design, is to iterate and improve upon your ideas until they feel right. Changes can take place all throughout the process. Even as early as game mechanics being tested in the independent “Gym” level I created, where everyone on the team could experiment with level ingredients, enemy encounters, etc. Initial drafts are great for locking in a certain vibe or general layout of the level, and blockouts are great for fine-tuning how the level plays in the actual game. However, it takes time to work through those processes through many essential stages of iteration that stack on top of each other like Legos. The final product rarely looks exactly 1:1 to the initial idea, and I learned that this is actually a very good thing because it means the idea was improved and iterated on for the benefit of all. The process of design is an iterative and collaborative experience that I wholeheartedly enjoy.
Blockouts in Unity
After many iterations of the paper design, I then moved on to the actual game engine. I built each level’s foundational layers using simple, easy-to-move geometry and placeholders. It’s essential to keep the level modular at this stage because playtests reveal areas that could use adjustments and refinement. The blockout phase combined with playtests allowed me to calibrate the game’s levels to craft a better game flow. It’s also the best time to hone in on pacing, level ingredients, and gather overall feedback.
The Final Product
After each level was calibrated after playtesters’ feedback, it was time to assemble the final product. I locked in my decisions on final enemy placements, item placements, objective paths, checkpoints, and more. I added textures and art assets to the scenes I built to craft environments that were visually interesting. I learned how to balance real-time and baked lighting. I crafted small environmental storytelling bits that told silent stories, which was one of my favorite parts. I laid out paths consisting of collectibles to help guide the player in the right direction subtly. All this and more. Designing and building Edge of Hell’s levels was a long, rewarding experience that taught me an unfathomable amount about game design. Level design is my passion, and seeing people play through the worlds I built fills me with immeasurable amounts of joy and satisfaction. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions regarding my level design or game design processes. I love to talk about this kind of stuff with anyone who will listen, haha. My contact info can be found at the bottom of the page!
Level Ingredients
Throughout the development of the game, I recognized the need for various level ingredients to truly elevate the gameplay. Each ingredient played a crucial role within the game, and each ingredient served a distinct purpose. Some were designed to teach the player a certain way they could interact with the game world, some were designed as ways to maneuver the levels, and some were key components of the game's mechanical DNA. All of them, however, were integral to providing the best experience possible to the player during their time in Edge of Hell. I made sure to design these ingredients in such a way that they could be repurposed and reused throughout various parts of the game. For example, the elevators’ code remains the same throughout each level, even though the runic designs on each one are different. Red runes are found on Level 1 elevators and moving platforms, yellow on Level 2, etc.
Elevators & Moving Platforms For Complexity
These types of level ingredients were designed as ways to add complexity to the way the player maneuvers throughout the game world. Rather than boring flat landscapes and endless hallways, I created pieces that enabled verticality and timing-based horizontal movement. I used the elevators to get the player up, down, and around different places and obstacles. Shown above is a mini-puzzle I placed in the environment that is completely optional. If the player successfully uses the elevators to avoid the toxic spikes, they are rewarded with many collectible souls! I used the constantly moving platforms to make the player act deliberately when they want to cross over dangerous terrain, such as lava or quicksand pits. Both the elevators and moving platforms are decorated with runes to signify that they can be interacted with by the player. I like having multiple ways for the player to engage and interact with the world around them. Another way I did that was by making it so the various gates found throughout the game had to be shot open by the player.
Puzzles For Critical Thinking
The main way I managed the pacing of Edge of Hell was via puzzle sections. Although the game is first and foremost an action game with combat sections galore, a game full of only one type of experience quickly grows boring. Introducing my puzzles to the rescue. In Level 1, I kept it simple with basic platforming sections where the player had to figure out a way to cross through dangerous terrain. In Level 2, I designed and built 3 distinct puzzle rooms that were the main event of the level. The Thread Room, shown above, had the player use various angles to shoot various targets with their fireballs in order to proceed. I loved this style of puzzle so much in fact that it was featured in Level 3 as well. The Parry Room had the player redirect incoming enemy projectiles in order to shatter glass targets to proceed. The Parkour Room had the player make various difficult jumps and calculate the way to go in order to proceed. All of my puzzles tested the player’s skills and served as breathers from the combat sections in order to maintain good game pacing.