Blog Post #1 ♡ Oomfie Sus

Introduction

Hi there, and welcome to my first blog post for GAM4412: Digital Game Prototyping! I’ve never thought about level design or game prototyping, so bear with me as I navigate an entirely different side of game development. In this blog post, I will showcase my idea for my UE4 Prototype assignment, explain what inspired my idea, and showcase the concept sketches. 

My Level Idea 

For this project, I decided to create an entirely new map for Among Us. Since Among Us's maps are mainly space-themed or something similar, I thought it would be interesting to try a map that is based on something that is more familiar to the average player, such as a cruise ship or battleship.

Every Among Us map have certain rooms that give players access to select special abilities. For example, Security has cams, Medical Bay has vitals, Admin has Admin map, and Communications has doorlogs. Also, many maps have overlapping location/room names, such as Electrical, Admin, Reactor, etc. To keep continuity with my map and the Among Us official maps, I would use some of the existing room themes, such as Storage, Navigation, and Engine. I would add some unique rooms that pertain to the map's theme, though, such as Galley, Viewing Deck, and Captain's Quarters.

Inspiration

I have nearly 100 hours in Among Us, and many of those are spent complaining to my friends about several of the game's map designs. Of the current four released maps (Polus, Airship, Mira, and Skeld), I think all of the maps are terribly designed except one. Airship has a ton of wasted space and too big for any party size except 15; Mira is too small for the standard 8-10 player lobbies; Skeld is extremely crewmate-sided with the map's abilities.

I wanted to try my own hand at making a balanced map for Among Us, because I don't like most of the current ones. I really love the ocean and ships (I wanted to be a marine biologist a few years ago!), so I wanted to try and apply something I love into this game.