Above Land (wip)
Above Land is an open-world action MMORPG currently in development, set in a retrofuturistic world where skyfaring civilizations thrive among floating islands veiled in clouds, drawing energy from the air and stars to travel across the skies.
TASKS:
My responsibilities included designing the overall world map, shaping questlines, refining combat and traversal flow, and building a variety of distinct level structures. I worked from the early conceptual stages through to greyboxing and contributed directly to level art in some stages as well. My involvment also extended to set dressing, foliage passes, and the creation of modular kits. I frequently served as a bridge between the concept and environment art teams, integrating storytelling elements and cutscene triggers to create a cohesive world experience.
CORE DESIGN GOALS:
One of the major design challenges involved harmonizing vehicle-based travel, such as planes and air bikes, with grounded, on-foot gameplay. This required meticulous planning of level layouts, metrics, and enemy placements to maintain consistent gameplay pacing and intuitive player pathing. Deep cooperation and consistent consultation was needed with fellow game and combat designers to achieve engaging and meaningful encounters. I really tried to prioritize rewarding player exploration with emergent, discoverable moments while preserving non-linear progression that felt natural and uninterrupted.
Aside from designing the open-world free-roam areas, I also contributed to the creation of boss arenas, linear dungeon instances for group-based gameplay, and multiplayer PvP/PvX zones. Each of these spaces featured carefully handcrafted points of interest, while repeating elements were developed as modular templates to enable rapid iteration and reuse. This allowed for efficient adaptation across different regions, ensuring each area maintained its unique motif and thematic identity without sacrificing development speed.
general world map
Greybox to level process
The stripe of images below illustrates our team’s level design approach for constructing player spaces across the world of Above Land.
Our process always began with a narrative briefing that established how the space fit within the larger scope of the game. Ideally, this was accompanied by concept art, but when that wasn’t available, we’d jump straight into what the level team colloquially called the “cheese pass”—a quick and dirty orange blockout.
The cheese pass allowed us to rough in dimensions, intended pathing, signposting, and core themes without committing to specific parameters. If anything needed radical revision, we could apply changes easily before introducing significant game logic or locking ourselves into irreversible decisions.
Once we were satisfied with the foundation, we’d move into an official greybox phase. Using the cheese pass as our base, we refined the navigation of the space with precision, incorporating obstacles, cover points, engagement zones, affordances, objective fulfillment, and quest logic. This was a robust, iterative process that continued through multiple rounds of gameplay testing and design adjustments.
Occasionally, we’d need to block out proxy sets for thematic assets destined for those spaces. When corresponding art assets were already completed, our responsibilities would sometimes extend into the next phase: replacing primitives and proxies with final assets. This established visual clarity within the scene and gave us opportunities to make targeted improvements to the player experience. It also ensured that assets met required criteria in terms of collisions, scale, texel density, and more for potential reuse throughout the game.
At this stage, the level would be handed off to the lighting and art departments for detailing, shading embellishments, color keying, mood establishment, and final polish.
Example of passes for a level
Main city (Central HUB)
The central hub of Above Land, this sprawling city serves as the nexus for multiplayer functionality and social interaction. Players can meet others, form parties, and prepare before embarking on their journeys. It functions as the primary fast-travel hub and activity center throughout the game. The city is organized into distinct districts, each serving specific player needs: barracks for contract acquisition, a bazaar for vendor trading, an armory for crafting, and more. Players can freely navigate the city on their airbikes to quickly scale it.
breakdown and evolution of VILLAGE ISLAND LEVEL SPACES
VISUAL LANGUAGE & DESIGN IDENTITY:
A series of progression snapshots showcasing several early-game levels. These level spaces share a cohesive thematic identity, prominently featuring the frutiger aero and retrofuturism aesthetic that defines the game’s overall visual language. As demonstrated throughout, all level spaces are architecturally structured as floating landmasses: a design choice that maintains consistency with the broader world design and supports the core exploration pillar. These open-ended, suspended environments presented unique design challenges, particularly in implementing hard and soft progression gates within non-traditional boundaries. Careful consideration was required in spatial layout to account for the multidirectional nature of player traversal through these floating archipelagos.
leviathan levels
Players face monumental leviathan encounters throughout their journey, tasked with purifying these colossal beings to push the narrative forward. These living landscapes carry entire ecosystems on their backs, all corrupted by the game’s antagonistic forces. After battling through distinct exterior zones, players delve into the creature’s internal chambers for a climactic confrontation with the corruption’s origin. Purification rewrites the environment itself—colors, atmosphere, and visual identity shift dramatically as sealed routes open and new explorable regions materialize.
boss arena Instances
To purge a Leviathan and restore it to its original form, players must descend into the creature’s depths, navigating through its living corridors until they reach the infection’s source—a containment chamber housing the invasive parasite. These chambers serve as instanced combat arenas, each hosting an epic multi-phased boss encounter. Though uniform in scale and function, every chamber is distinct in atmosphere and design, with thematic set pieces that embody the character of the corruption festering within.
Combat spaces were designed with generous proportions to comfortably accommodate both solo and cooperative party play. Above Land features an extensive arsenal of weapons, each boasting flashy, dynamic movesets alongside a diverse roster of enemy types spanning various sizes. Spacious layouts with ample negative space were essential for maintaining visual clarity during skill expression and allowing smooth camera tracking through free-aim movement and unit displacement. As a result, dense set dressing was generally reserved for zones that prioritized exploration and other gameplay systems.
Early footage of the fishing minigame found throughout the floating islands’ water bodies. Players engage in tug-of-war sequences with hooked creatures, maneuvering their airbike to avoid obstacles and environmental hazards while hitting quick-time events to land the catch.
Small Floating Islands
Collage and videos of smaller “filler” islands scattered between major destinations. Some feature questlines and side activities, while others serve as resource hotspots for crafting materials and fishing endemic wildlife.
Progress demos evaluating environmental readability across day/night cycles. After major lighting and VFX updates, we tested both ground and airbike traversal to confirm that atmospheric cloud layers framed level boundaries and enhanced the dreamlike tone without compromising visibility of key landmarks during exploration
