Tim Davies - Level Design
FOREWORD
This is the page where I’ll be posting all my personal work. It is less about polished, finished projects and more of a dev-blog and a space to share my work in progress as I try to build my own game. It will also slightly act as a master feature backlog.
All the games I have worked on professionally over the years have used proprietary engines, so my creative focus has always been on those projects rather than building something of my own and exploring Unreal. Now that the whole world seems to be using it, this feels like the right time to scratch that creative itch, get back into an editor and make things again in any spare time I have.
GAME INSPIRATION
I’ve had an idea brewing in my head for a while now, one of them being a game that uses a modular elemental wand system to solve puzzles and fight enemies. I think the modular approach will give the design a lot of scalability and create a sandbox where the player can experiment and find their own solutions. Along the way, it will give solid learning and show examples of level design fundamentals.
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3 games I'm taking inspiration from:
Although I'm still not sure on the exact art style of my game I do love Tunic's. I was impressed with the middle ground they found with their invented language, giving just enough information to get by. I would like to aim for a similar length game, although I found the unlocking of the regions slightly too linear.
The main inspiration for my game is the wand system in Noita. I love the way that after many, many deaths I started to learn how to construct my wand even though there is no instructions. The voxel systems and the way the wand reacts to different materials is also very cool although maybe not what I'm going for.
A legendary game. There's a obviously a lot of characters and narrative that I will struggle to do but my main takeaway is the way that the player finds solutions elsewhere in the world and returns to solve them.
My friend said not to name my game yet, but you name things you care about, it brings things to life and gives attachment.
I'm going with Gylphsmith.
17/07/25
ROUGH PLAN
I have a bunch of puzzles in mind for later, but my initial focus is on the wand system.
I think there are two main groups of glyphs: Elemental and Modifier. The Elemental ones will have their own properties and interactions with each other, and the Modifiers will alter them further.
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I fully expect this design to evolve, some glyphs may not work, and I will likely have ideas for new ones.
21/07/25
(VERY) BASIC 3C'S
I’m starting with the third-person template. I’ve made a few tweaks to the field of view and spring arm distance. It will definitely change later, but for now it is enough to test with.
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I’ve also added a basic aiming mechanic that uses an over-the-shoulder view, a line trace, and a crosshair for puzzles that need a bit more precision. When firing from the hip, the player is also less accurate. This system will probably be removed once I start working on how the glyphs actually function, but it works well enough for early testing.
29/07/25
GLYPHS IN THE WAND
I now have all the Elemental glyph blueprints created, with each of them spawning their own separate projectile. Currently, I need to manually input the equipt spells into an array on the wand. When firing, it runs through the array and fires off each spell​​​ in that
order. I’ve also created the Force modifier, which gets the last elemental projectile spawned and immediately adds an impulse to it. If consecutive elemental spells are being spawned, a slight delay is added between reading the array elements. If no elemental projectile has been spawned, then a Force projectile will be spawned instead. The ball’s visibility will be reduced at a later date and maybe become multiple projectiles to still continue forward if part of it hits an object.
​​The Force glyph was slightly more complex than I had imagined. This setup also raises the priority of creating an interact system, so I can change the wand on the fly rather than jumping in and out of the game.
18/08/25
PLAYER INTERACTION AND SETTING WAND ARRAY IN GAME
Perhaps not the most exciting update, but to ease future testing I’ve been working on the interaction system so that pickups are added directly into the wand array, rather than being set manually. I’ve also created a debug cylinder that clears the wand of spells and respawns any tagged pickups.
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I started playing with getting the cube to react to different elements, but the setup is too hard coded for my liking. I’m planning to rework this into a scalable system and start tweaking the properties for how the cube reacts and how the projectiles behave.
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The Force glyph also received a rewrite, since using line traces was excessive for my needs.​​
14/09/25
ELEMENTAL PROJECTILE & PUDDLE INTERACTIONS
It's been a while, but there's been plenty of progress on the Elemental wand system.​
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The first major update was dropping the old Base and Child class setup, which made it awkward to switch element types on the fly. Now every projectile spawns from the same class, with its properties pulled from a data table both when it is created and when it switches. The switching happens via an interface after checking the result in the "Interactions table" (left).
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Projectiles now leave puddles on impact. Each element has its own conditions for spawning these puddles, and each puddle has its own properties. This will include player damage when I add that system.
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Projectile mass and bounciness has also had another pass, however, I realised it is not much fun when a heavy projectile falls short, so all fired projectiles now have a normalised force. There are still a few bugs with the steam element, but the interactions are now manageable and starting to feel more cohesive as I refine their behaviours.​​
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MOD GLYPHS
After experimenting with projectile properties and elemental interactions, I realised that several planned mod glyphs were either redundant or already occurred naturally so I've had a rethink from the ones posted above. The values will likely have some iterations.
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I've also made it so certain mods counteract one another to help keep the resulting projectiles more balanced.
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The modifier glyphs can be stacked to exaggerate their effects and allow players to create distinctive projectile behaviours. Wherever possible I've opted to multiply rather than add to increase the benefit of stacking glyphs.
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Video coming soon
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OBJECT ELEMENTAL INTERACTIONS
Metal, rock and wood
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PUZZLES
The Elemental system is the foundation, the mod glyphs are the levers, the puzzles are the meat.
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DAMAGE AND HEALTH SYSTEM
Before adding enemies they need a purpose and the player needs means to heal.
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ELEMENTAL ENEMIES
The enemies will be themed around the elements and have various shapes, sizes and behaviours
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STAFF CRAFTING UI
Allow the player to reorder the glyphs on their staff on the fly
