Scavenger Mandate

Genre: Survival Horror / Action-Adventure (PvE)
Type: Blockout
Engine: Unreal Engine 5.6
Tools: JakubW's AGLS, Mariusz Jarotek's Mission System, UE Blueprints, Tilt Brush, Vegas Pro
Iterations # 6
Playtests # 6
Role: Level designer

I expanded Zombie Kebab VR beyond the food truck using intentional level design. I studied successful games and player psychology to turn a simple cooking-and-combat loop into a solid, engaging outside experience.

Overview

See Full Breakdown Below

Goal

Expanding the Core Loop

The goal was to evolve my game prototype Zombie Kebab VR beyond its core cooking-and-combat loop. While the base game takes place inside the food truck, this level focuses on what happens when the player steps outside.

I needed to build an additional layer of gameplay to make my prototype more fun and more engaging in the long-term.
To achieve this without relying on guesswork or “gut feeling,” I used the following methodology:

Finding Patterns: I analysed genre definig games, iconic TV series and other media to map out the spatial layout and tension building techniques.
Extracting Principles: I looked into the psychology behind why these patterns work – how can they dictate player behavior and manage the emotional curve.
Applying Intentionally: I translated these insights into level beats (exploration, scavenging, puzzles and combat).

Level Overview

Pathing:
The player starts at the Food Truck, which cannot run without a power cell. The cell sits in the hospital basement, and every location on the map moves the player closer to it.

Food Truck. Start and end of the mission.
Hotel. The manager’s room holds the key card to Diner’s storage room. Finding it requires using fire escape stairs.
Diner. Introduces the boss while the player is still under-equipped. The encounter ends in a retreat through the back door.
Sewers. Close off the retreat route and guide the player toward the hospital.
Hospital. Holds the power cell and lets the player discover the genesis of the outbreak.
Main gate. Needs to be blown up with explosives left in the military tent.

🔎 Reality Check:
The level originally ended with a scripted rail-shooter drive through the streets. Flagged by Instructors during the pre-production as a possible feature creep it was removed from the scope in favour of adding environmental hazards and combat situations.

Walkthrough

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5 Videos

Beat Overview

Beat 1: Intro

The mission opens on a one-minute film. The player rides inside the food truck slung under a helicopter, watches the city go past underneath, and takes the briefing from an officer on screen:

The truck loses power the moment the helicopter releases it, so they have to find a battery.
Nobody has come back out of this district since whatever happened at the hospital, so they are also there to find out what that was.

The helicopter drops the truck down, the doors open, the player steps out onto an overrun intersection with zombies already closing in, and picks up the first mission, find a weapon.

They can go in any direction from there, but the first thing they see is the entrance to the hotel.

I animated the black and white panels with simple camera moves, pushes and zooms, and put the soundtrack under them. I edited it in Vegas, exported it as MP4 with its own subtitle track, and play it back through a widget in engine before control passes to the player.

Process Breakdown

Overview

Scavenger Mandate is a ten-minute single-player mission. I built it on the Game Design Skills bootcamp, across nine weeks. Mike Madden contributed the curriculum. Nathan Kellman ran the lectures. Brandon Dolinsky gave the feedback and support throughout the process. Jordan McMorris was our group’s mentor, and he made sure that the work stayed unique and personal to us.

Instructor feedback:
“Your level flow is especially strong. The loop of explore, fail or escape, power up, and return for a stronger second attempt is a very effective structure.”

That loop is the spine of everything below.

Research, Ideation & Planning

Real-World References:

I pulled scale metrics from Cortlandt Alley in New York and from the abandoned Keller Hotel on Barrow Street and the Empire Hotel in Sharon Springs.

The final descent references the ruined wards of Charity Hospital in New Orleans, and Gimbels passageway, NY.

Two more references came from my own observations. While I was working on this level I spent time in a hospital, so I studied the order the rooms put a patient through, starting at admission, and the basement route uses that same order. The excavation in the street came from roadworks I walk past every day.

Art & Media:

I wanted a crossing every viewer would read as iconic, and the model makers who built the 1980s HBO feature-presentation opening had already done that research, so I inspired on their city layout and building heights.

Edward Hopper‘s Nighthawks was the main reference for late-night urban isolation I was aiming at and the TMNT tunnels shaped the sewer line.

The Walking Dead is the reference I just couldn’t resist to skip. The tank parked at the hospital, the rows of body bags and the truck barricade all come from the most memorable scenes of season I opening episodes.

Games:

I started from Call of Duty Zombies: Shadows of Evil, because the hub and the coin-operated vending machines matched what I had in mind. Early feedback showed that this pushed the idea too much toward an arcade shooter, so I changed references.

I went to Resident Evil and Silent Hill 2 to see how they use narrow choke points to build tension. Later, when players kept getting stuck on my geometry, I looked at Left 4 Dead 2 and Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster to fix the spacing around crowds.

Mario Odyssey came from outside the genre. I picked it in pre-production to see how a city level handles verticality and drops into holes.

Pre-Production

VR Sketch:

I sketched the initial layout in VR using Tilt Brush. I used real-world metrics (Manhattan lot sizes, standard sidewalk widths etc.) to get an immediate, physical sense of scale before drawing a plan of it.

Reality Check:
Playtesting quickly proved that “realistic” doesn’t always mean “playable.” I still had to go in and double the size of several places later on.

Level Design Document (LDD):

My LDD covers the design goals, objectives, setting, points of interest, mechanics, and the beats with their flow and pacing. Creating it was necessary to get the raw vision out of my head and set a clear target.

Reality Check:
The feedback praised the structure and clarity but flagged the scope as too ambitious forcing bold cuts early on.

Beat Sheet:

I described all beats using the same four fields: location, description, gameplay type, and landmarks and guidance. Filling them in forced me to say what the player does in each space and what leads them there, before I built any of it.

Reality Check:
Paper pacing did not survive contact with the engine, eventually I added more varied combat, put in environmental puzzles, and reversed the order of several key events.

Rough Block Out

Results: I took the Tilt Brush sketch into Unreal and had the whole route walkable, with basic lighting and text boxes marking the flow.

Goal: One walkable route from the food truck to the hospital and back, crossable in under ten minutes

Instructor feedback:
“There are a lot of systems, locations, and beats working together, so as you move into blockout, it will be important to prioritize what is essential to the experience and what can be simplified if needed.”

Playtest feedback: “Maybe simplify the maze, but give gun and put combat.”

Implementation:

Underground: the tunnels ran long and worked only as a maze, so I cut them down rather than leave players lost in dark, tight corridors.
Sewers: I added a combat encounter there, so the player can practise fighting before facing the boss again.
Hospital: I removed the spare elevators and corridors, because I would rather use the minutes on action than on pathfinding dark corridors.

First Playable

Results: I nearly doubled most of the level, rebuilt the hospital around the route a patient takes through it, and raised the city massing around the whole block, so the player gets vistas from inside the buildings and always has a landmark to navigate by.

Goal: Put storytelling into the level. Mark where the systems will go, make the final beat location more interesting.

Instructor feedback:
“The number of text boxes you’re using is a strong point. They do a great job of explaining what’s happening and make the level easy to follow.”

Playtest feedback:
“Emergency stairs path to 217 is easy to miss (swap rooms)” … “add connection RESTAURANT<->HOTEL (better showcase for the story of a new manager who stayed at the hotel)”

Implementation:

Metrics: I widened the corridors and moved the walls because the old proportions were too claustrophobic and caused camera glitches.
Scale: I added a second wing to the hotel and a back-of-house to the diner, because neither building was believable without them. I also cut the sewer pipe diameter.
Hospital: the corridor to the autopsy theatre got poor reaction in playtests, so I redesigned it. Now it follows a patient’s route, from admission through decontamination, isolation and autopsy. Also the archive, morgue and pump room were added.

Scripting & Enemies

Results: Two scripted sequences: the ambush that turns the diner into a chase, and the dead cop in the broken elevator.

Goal: Get the first scripted sequences working in the build

Instructor feedback:
“Things like the cop falling from the ceiling are great since they help build tension and make the space feel more immersive. These kinds of details go a long way.”

Playtest feedback: “The ambush gave me a panic attack… the boss fight music is too loud an the enemy is too powerful”

Implementation:

Items: the AGLS kit had no keys, so I built custom items with their own mesh and icon, and blueprint logic that checks the player’s inventory before anything fires.
Ambush: using the keycard opens the back-of-house, locks the other doors, opens the yard door and releases the boss. The music switches to the chase theme, and switches again when the player drops into the hole.
Boss, first version: it used the standard zombie mesh, was no bigger than the others and had no health bar, only a lot of HP. Players tried to kill it, failed, and did not understand why. I fixed that later, during the worldbuilding & polishing phase..
Elevator: I put it at the end of a dark corridor off the golden path, and warned the player on the way with a CCTV feed, signs on each floor and muzak leaking through the ceiling. When they squeeze through the jammed doors, a dead policeman drops from the ceiling.

AI-assisted Rapid Prototype workflow for posing characters

Step 1: I used a $5 artist's mannequin fand took a photo with my phone. Then I uploades it to DeepMotion.ai (free account). I used Animation -> Pose and downloaded the .glb it generates.

Step 2: Uploaded .glb to Claude to read 3D data (UVs, bones, triangles), map parts, and repaint the texture into a minimalist zombie cop with torn uniform and rotting skin.

Step 3: I imported the .glb file to UE. To make the scene feel more alive and believable I added free FAB assets: a red splat decal and cables mesh.

Worldbuilding & Polishing

Results: The mission runs start to finish, from the drop out of the helicopter to the battery going into the truck. It was the longest pass of the project.

Goal: Finish the systems I had only marked out and make sure the level feels like a city block with action and story in it.

Implementation:

City: I put a crowd of zombies on the intersection, so the hub has combat and pressure in it. I filled the street with wrecks, trash, debris, military equipment and environmental hazards.
Hotel: I added the world-space prompts for better interactivity with an abandoned place and rearranged the detective’s room, added the evidence board and a combat situation in the bathroom.
Diner: I froze the guest area mid-ritual, with a couple at the bar, a birthday table and a zombie pinned to the pool table. Behind the register I left a printed complaint about the new manager, which explains why his keycard is up in room 218.
Sewers: I added the water shader, the rats, steam jets, and sewer ambience sfx.
Hospital: I built the steam puzzle, with the valve in the pump room and a crawl through the archive as the way around it. I added the voices in the isolation cells, the specimen tanks, and the power cell extraction sequence.
Gate: I put explosive charges in the military tent for blowing the gate open. The player can also scavenge the tent and re-arm before going back for the boss.