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Iter Mortis

Iter Mortis is a project developed by me and some other classmates with a main focus on making a good game, but also with the aspiration to compete in the Swedish Game Awards. The game was developed during a two month course during our third semester. The team consisted of 6 graphical artists and 4 programmers. 

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​My Contributions

  • Lead Level Designer

  • Lead Sound Designer

  • Game Designer

  • Producer

  • 3D Artist

  • Optimization​

Iter Mortis Logo Black_edited.png

Level Design

As I was the Lead Level Designer it was my job to plan, create and communicate the Level Design to the rest of the team. We decided early on that we wanted 5 different Levels to represent the 5 stages of grief. It was then my duty to work closely with the team in order to focus each level on portraying a strong feeling during the gameplay, and also providing a strong visual theme.​ I did this by helping them with planning, whiteboxing, playtesting, itterating and a lot of work in the engine.

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Level Design Focus of the Game

As this was my first project as Lead Level Designer, I focused the levels on supporting the narrative because that was the main focus of the game. Because of this I created levels that fitted thematically with each stage of grief, which in turn would reflect the emotional journey the

character has to go on. Thus focusing less on pacing, tension, and gameplay flow.

Level - River Styx​

I wanted the game to represent themes of different mythologies and the afterlife. So we decided to make our Hub a version of the River Styx. As we would have our ferryman transfer the player from level to level as you experience every stage of grief. 

Level 1.png

Level - Denial​

We decided for everyday chores as the gameplay for this Level. So I made a simple apartment to make the player feel like nothing was wrong, while still implying that everything was wrong by putting the apartment inside the cave from the River Styx level.

Level - Rage​

When designing this level, my goal was not only to create a sense of rage through the chaotic environment, but also immerse the player in this emotion. So I decided to make this level a maze.

Forcing players to navigate a disorienting path towards a ringing phone that must be destroyed. This worked well with the gameplay, creating frustration and anger in the player.

Level 2.png
Level 3.png

Level - Bargaining​

The idea behind this level was to bargain your way to freedom and escape this deep forgotten prison. As you climbed to freedom, the character would create hope, only to have it taken away in the end. The layout of the level was mainly made by another Level Designer in our team. My job became to itterate on the level, making it fit better with the gameplay.

Level - Depression​

This level was mainly designed by one of our team members, and I mostly helped with the Game Design. I came up with the idea to revisit old memories through photographs that would take you across the level, making you experience different parts of the area and the characters old memories.

Level 4.png
Level 5.png

Level - Acceptance​

I had very little time to plan the last level of the game, so I decided to make this sort of a memory lane of everything you experienced so far. The focus here was to make it a very emotional level, with the character reflecting on everything and finally accepting his fate. The inspiration for this level was the end-scene of Tim Burtons movie "Big Fish".

Remaining Contributions

 Lead Sound Design​

As the team consisted of students with no background in certain areas of game development, I took it upon myself to be in charge of Sound Design. I have no background in Sound Design engineering but I have a will and a drive to make anything I work on as good as possible. So I made sounds, found copyright free sounds and edited them to fit the theme and style of the game. 

Producer​

This was my first project as Producer and my main focus was to help the Product Owner and Scrum Master plan, organize and prioritize. I also took it upon myself to push the team to communicate more and give eachother constructive feedback. As this was a school project, there was a lot of things we could learn during the project. 

Game Design​

Game Design and Level Design goes hand in hand, so I also worked as a Game Designer for this project to create puzzles, interactions, mechanics and make these dynamically work with our vision. I mainly had a hand on working with the Rage, Bargaining and Depression levels in terms of Game Design. Focusing on making the gameplay fit in with the level and the narrative.

Game Artist​

This was the least of my focus during this project. I made some 3D assets that was fitting to the style of the game. For most levels I also worked as a Environmental Artist, so I would communicate to the team what assets would fit in to each level. The assets I worked on for this game can be found on my Artstation.

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