<aside> đź’ˇ This is my entry for Steve Lee's Level Design Game Jam: Five Rooms.

This Half-Life 2 level is very short and takes a few minutes to play, but it's designed to support multiple playthroughs, allowing the player to experiment with different kinds of approaches.

The video below presents two very different experiences, though they’re from a slightly old version of the map.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3ocZmntGB0

The map can be downloaded at itch.io.

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Introduction

From the full jam description:

The theme this time is “Five Rooms”. This is to encourage people to:

  1. Make smaller but higher quality levels
  2. Be economic with level space, and favour elegant design decisions
    1. How much gameplay can you get out of a smaller space?
  3. Encourage levels with distinctive areas and a clearer sense of structure

Submissions are on Itch here.

Here’s my submission on Itch.

Brief

This was provided to me by Steve Lee. It wasn’t part of the jam itself—it was something he provided for folks like me who are making a Half-Life 2 level for the first time, and could use a provided plan.

  1. The player starts in a small room with a door.
  2. On the other side of the door is a slightly bigger room containing 3 zombies, 1 metro police officer armed with a pistol, and a crowbar. It's set up so that they start to fight automatically, the zombies will win the fight, and the player can hear it from the first room. The player has to pick up either the crowbar or the pistol to finish off the zombies.
  3. In the next room, the player enters on a raised walkway that goes around the edge of the room. On the floor below, there are 2 combine soldiers armed with shotguns, with their back turned to the player. This way, it should be up to the player when they start the fight.
  4. If the player walks around the raised walkway, they can find a door to a small room containing a medkit, a shotgun and 2 grenades.
  5. The player can attack the 2 Combine soldiers from the raised walkway, or go down to them by either taking the stairs, or jumping over the railing.
  6. On the bottom floor, the room has a large opening to an outdoor courtyard, that is blocked by a combine force field. The player must go to a side room on the bottom floor to find a button that will shut it off. This room could also feature another medkit, and some ammo.
  7. When the player returns to the combine force field after shutting it off, it turns out that Combine soldiers have appeared to investigate it, and the player must take them out (this is the final encounter).
  8. At the other end of the courtyard is a door that acts as the end of the level. The player either has to open that door, or move into the room on the other side of it, to trigger a fade to black, and end the level.

Note that I extended this in version 3. The door at the end of the courtyard is actually above ground level, and can only be accessed by unlocking a door in the start room, whose “key” is in the lower level of the courtyard. The player must backtrack through the previous rooms, some of which have changed. I also added vents between some rooms to facilitate alternative play styles.

Design principles

These are just some principles I’d like to have present in the final level (they might not be present in the initial iterations).