My name is Kyra, and I was the art team member in charge of building the garden levels. Riley, the design team member who worked on the garden with me, gave me a rough block out of the castle’s exterior. I got to work replacing the white boxes with assets and making it look pretty. The first thing I worked on was the hedge maze. I added in the proper assets and filled in the blank spaces with fancier hedges and flowers. This took a decent amount of time.

Then, I started working on other types of foliage. I added reeds, lily pads, bushes, and trees. My goal was to break up the flat terrain and make the environment look more lively. I decorated a cute little island in the middle of a small pond. Outside the perimeter walls, I added canal assets we had to the moat, so that it was no longer an odd hole in the ground. I also added many more trees all around the perimeter wall to fill the space out and discourage the player from going anywhere they were not supposed to.

Next, I replaced the bridge and perimeter wall white boxes with their proper assets and added a nice front gate. I flattened a tree to act as the path on top of the perimeter wall. I tried very hard to get the tree to be walkable with its default collision. It was too finicky, and Riley later replaced that collision with a flat box.

Unfortunately, it was then time to make the castle itself. I followed the maps Jacklynn had made as closely as possible and spent a full day, 8 hours, piecing castle assets together. The windows were transparent, allowing the player to see the barren land inside the castle, so I had to make a new glass material that was opaque. After I had the walls and windows where I needed them, I had to place about 5 layers of roof assets: the flat ceiling, the blue shingles, the overhanging shingles, the white caps, and the ornate end caps. The roof took a very, very long time, but at least I was done. Except I was not.

I had to do the same process over again for the chapel, which was thankfully much smaller. It was brought to my attention that I built the chapel backwards, so I had to flip it around. I still think the roof looked better the other way. I also used a different kit to assemble a barracks, a stable, a signal fire stand, and a small shed.

I took a screenshot of the empty area designated for the hedge maze and made Riley draw a maze in it for me. Then, I copied it into the game. It was too easy for the player to look above the maze and cheat, so I made the hedges thicker and taller.

The garden had far too much open space, so I shrank in the perimeter walls. I added more decorative hedges throughout the left half of the garden. I added some larger trees to shake things up as well. Riley extended the hedge maze, added a small gazebo, a shooting range, and a reading nook behind the castle. I then adjusted the lights to accommodate a nighttime setting.

At this point, the left half was looking pretty good, but the right half was looking rather barren. I added a pretty apple orchard… and was promptly told it’d look better across the street. I moved it and added an open market in its place.

I also added even more foliage, including flowers, grass, trees, tree stumps, and bushes, along the walls to break things up and make the transition from wall to floor look more natural. I even added a well with glowing eyes at the bottom as an easter egg. You have to look very closely to see them, but I thought it was a fun touch.

I duplicated the level and created a daytime lighting setup. Then, I made VFX leaves, fireflies, and butterflies to float about their respective levels. I optimized the lighting for the torches I’d strewn about the level and replaced the glowing windows with non-emissive blue windows in the daytime version of the level.

Next, I had to make duplicates of the map for each level in the game. There was night 1, night 2, night 3, and day 4. The main variance between them was how the player got in and out of the levels. Night 1 uses the tree I had placed and the broken window I’d added to get in and out. Night 2, I removed the tree, boarded up the window, and opened the grate where the moat met the river inside the castle. I added a stack of rocks next to the gate that had partially collapsed, creating stepping stones for the player to traverse the river. Night 3 was the same, so no change. Day 4, the rock pile fully collapses, blocking off the entrance via grate. Instead. The front door is wide open. Nice and simple. I had to ensure I added plenty of stepping stones and raised the riverbed floor to prevent the player from getting stuck in the water between the mote and the river.

I added a shack with usable items to serve as a small tutorial zone. The starting area was very ugly and clearly showed where the landscape ended. I veered the painted dirt path off to the side and planted more trees to hide its abrupt end. I also added mountains in the distance to make things look less isolated. It looked much better, but I had to create a V2 of EACH level variant to migrate these changes together.

With that, most of the big things were ready. I did a lot of clean up: patching small holes in the terrain, removing clipping foliage, extinguishing torches in the daylight level, and adjusting invisible walls to ensure the player couldn’t get anywhere they weren’t supposed to.

I also made a wayfinding torch that was more orange than the regular torches to help guide the player through the level. I made a sparkle VFX to highlight interactable items. I adjusted the color of the guard’s glowing vision eyes so they looked like torch lights, not red death lasers. I implemented as much player feedback as I could and gave feedback and advice for the lighting of other levels.

The last thing I did for this project was write a script for the teaser and trailer. I recorded and edited the teaser myself. Aaron and Aidan recorded footage for the trailer, and I edited it together.

I am pretty happy with how the garden levels turned out. I think they look very nice, lively, and convincing. I am very proud of this final product, though I believe the process of getting there could have been smoother.

Things I Would Like To Have Done Differently: I wish I had paced myself better. I believe I did too much at the very start of the project, which both burnt me out and left me scrambling to find something to do later in the project. I also wish I had collaborated more closely with the rest of the art team. When I made the chapel or the broken window, I should have spoken to the people working on those levels more to ensure we were on the same page. We got there in the end, but I could have saved us both some extra work if I’d double-checked.