Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time - This game sprang out of explorations we were doing for a multiplayer arena brawler (that eventually became Crash Team Rumble). Activision recommended that Crash fans would expect an accompanying campaign mode, so while development continued on the arena game, we started work on systems that would let us lay out single-player levels rapidly. Eventually the Arena game was determined to need more time to develop, so the standalone single-player campaign became TFBs main focus. Crash 4’s release in 2020 delighted fans everywhere with its heavy dose of nostalgia bathed in all-new mechanics.
As Level Design Lead, I led the team in creating a robust campaign of 43 levels with tons of new gameplay. I was also heavily involved in developing and tuning the game’s new core mechanics - the 4 Quantum Masks and the new locomotion methods (rope swing, rail grind, wall run).
One of the things I was most proud of was steering the game’s new Quantum Mask mechanics to being something that the player gets at particular locations within the levels to solve a problem local to that area and then disappearing, as opposed to the original writeup that proposed unlocking a mask at regular intervals in the game, and the player would then have access to any of them on demand whenever they wanted. I felt that the breakneck pace of Crash games meant that having too many choices would become frustrating for the player, and also would turn into a QA nightmare as every mask would need to be tested with every interaction in the game.
Authored Levels:
Rude Awakening / N.Sanity Peak / Bears Repeating / Building Bridges / Fossil Fueled / Out For Launch / The Crate Escape (Airship section) / Dimensional Map
Rude Awakening - 1st level of the game, pulling a lot of nostalgic beats from the original games at the beginning, and then after a tight section in a cave, revealing the giant vista that turns into a rail grind to show you the massive scope of the game. (1:05)
N.Sanity Peak - 2nd level of the game, introducing new rope swing mechanic (0:30) and culminating in one of the famous Crash 'run towards the camera' segments while chased by an angry spirit. (2:30)
Bears Repeating -
1:15 - Gravity platforms I made via Unreal blueprints.
2:00 - An homage to High Road, one of the classic Crash levels, occurs on the yellow Gem Path.
3:30 - Time Mask gameplay, allowing Crash to use Nitro Crates.
4:45 - The Polar section at the end has you chasing after Neo Cortex - we used spline mesh to block out the extensive play space.
Building Bridges - the Tawna-centered 'remix' of Bears Repeating.
1:20 - 2d path with electrical hazard panels attached to walls and the gravity platforms.
1:57 - We designed these 'Buddy Paths' show how these secondary characters have a role in Crash and Coco's main path. In this case, Tawna moves a giant pallet of Nitro crates into position for Crash to be able to traverse.
Fossil Fueled - Neo Cortex's introduction as a playable character.
Cortex has a new moveset that lets him dash forward horizontally and transform enemies into blocks/bounce pads. We found it was more intuitive and precise in a 2d environment, so much of his gameplay involved those setup types.
4:00 - I was very happy with this setup with the 2 enemies that Cortex changes their states multiple times to access the different crates.
Out For Launch - Intro level for the Gravity mask, allowing Crash to use his moveset inverted on the ceiling. Yes, it's mind-bending.
1:45 - 2d 'intro' section for the Gravity Mask. It's pretty late in the game, so it's not easy, but it does give the player plenty of time to consider each interaction.
5:20 - No such luck in this 2d section, where timed elements and ranged enemies mean you have to keep moving.
The Crate Escape (Airship Section) - A section of the game that's pretty controversial. The 'moving' crate objects are offset and then attached to a slowly rotating actor, and their collision/visibility is turned on when they 'exit' the airship. The feedback was that when Crash jumped, the crates seemed to move unnaturally faster than the player would expect, often resulting in the player overshooting their targeted crate. This was a result of the game physics for Crash - whenever he jumps, whatever velocity was being imparted by an object he is standing on is zeroed out and only his stick input is applied to his horizontal movement. Since these crate objects are moving away from the Airship pretty rapidly, jumping would elicit the effect of them suddenly moving a lot faster towards Crash.
Fun fact: Originally the event was supposed to be moving at ridiculous speeds with the buildings (seen far below the airship) whizzing by at your level, but my initial tests, while amazingly effective at eliciting the sense of speed, gave everyone motion sickness. Woops!
Dimensional Map - We made a choice to have a fun 'miniature golf'-style map to show progression through the game. I handled the layout and worked with the conceptual, art and animation teams to come up with each of the vignettes that accompanied a level/dimension unlock, and I created standardized objects that responded to the game's current save state when you entered the map.
(The video is a full playthrough, but contains all of the unlock vignettes between levels.)
11:45 - Hazardous Wastes dimension unlock
31:15 - Stage Dive level unlock
35:20 - Salty Wharf dimension unlock
41:30 - Tawna Intro