I'M A YOUNG LEVEL DESIGNER

Hello ! My name is Yannick Nyamsi, welcome here!You will find on this website my portfolio where I present you the games I worked on and the different projects I made. You will also find some gamejam projects.I worked on multiple projects at several studios, including Old skull Games (Lyon, France) and Magic Design Studios (Montpellier, France). Let me share with you my passion for level design!Thanks for coming, I hope you'll enjoy my work!

Game
2022 - 2023

Have a nice death

Have A Nice Death is a hand-drawn roguelike 2D action game, starring Death himself. Players travel through the headquarters of Death Incorporated, fighting against employees that have been reaping too many souls, with departmental heads as bosses.

Game
2024

Cryptical Path

Cryptical Path is an action rogue-lite that pushes the boundaries of the genre. Play the Architect, build your own path, and tame an ever-changing labyrinth you've been trapped in.

Block out
2021

apartment

Apartment is a defuse map created for a classic 5v5 competitive fps.
It is a map that takes place in an urban environment and focuses on confined spaces while offering long lines to defenders.

Block Out
2021

Colony

Colony is a map designed for a solo TPS. It highlights points of interest and important areas linked together by a world that can be explored with a vehicle.

Personal Project
2021

City Chase

City Chase is a solo end of year project. I took the opportunity to challenge all my prototyping skills. I pushed the concept to the maximum of what I could do in 2 months.

Group Project
2020

Bro's race

We made Bro's Race as a group project. Made on Unity, this multiplayer racing game allowed us to learn a lot and to work with a artists team from our school.

GameJam
2018 - now

Game Jams Projects

You will find here all the gamejam projects realized since 2018


about me

My studies

I Started a game design formation in 2018

The bachelor of the school GameSup in Lyon started with a preparatory class that allowed me to take my first steps in game design. The courses and the first group projects led me to become familiar with Unreal Engine and Unity.It is quite natural that I went towards the specialization of Level Designer. When I was younger I often used Hammer (Counter Strike: Source & Left 4 Dead) and The Elder Scrolls Construction Set (Oblivion).During the three years of my bachelor's degree, I tried to improve my skills in Level Design and Game Design. The multiple projects and gamejams (Ludum Dare, Global GameJam) allowed me to appreciate teamwork under pressure.

Unity

Procedural generation
Use of the Tile Palette
3C Prototyping
Blocking
ProBuilder
Scene Management
Visual Rendering

Unreal

Blocking
BlockOut tool
Scene Management
3C Blueprints
Level Design Blueprints
Basic Lights Rendering
Asset Implementation

Adobe

Photoshop
Illustrator
Premiere
InDesign
Lightroom
Realization of schemes
Isometric schemes

Office

PowerPoint
Excel
Word
Document keeping
Level Design document
Game Design document
Concept document


Have a nice death

Presentation

Have a Nice Death is a 2D action roguelike where you play as an overworked Death, whose employees have run rampant, completely throwing off the balance of souls - and his vacation plans. In order to restore order, you'll have to grab your trusty scythe and show your employees who's boss.

details

I've been working on the game since it was released in early access. My task is mainly to manage the procedural generation of the game and to make room architecture.The different worlds have their own orientation which brings different constraints. Each major update is accompanied by a new world.

The room creation process allowed to iterate quickly by placing tiles directly on the left side. Just update the room and place it in the generation bucket to be able to test directly in game. During the creation you can see the result with the baked art kit to get rid of all the graphic artifacts instantly.

The worlds represent the different departments of Death. Inc and are divided by floor. Each floor is a chunk composed by a series of rooms that are generated by seeds.We group the rooms by type and create the seeds with nodal graphs. This allows us to give at our chunks the orientation we want while keeping the benefits of the procedural generation.

To date, the game received 3 major updates before the release:Fast Foods Update: Introduction of the junk food world designed to be a vertical production lineNatural Disasters Update: Introduction of the world of natural disasters and improvement of all the other worlds of the gameExecutive decisions Update: Improvement of the general level design and balancing of the procedural generation

Bro's race

intentions

· Give a strong impression of speed.· Influence the player's vision with curves and buildings.· Incorporate shortcuts: "high risk / high reward.· Play with the player's disorientation.· Create a multiplayer experience.

When creating the layout, we first defined the points of interest (Looping, garage and high turn).The goal was to find an interesting way to connect these points. So we worked on a vertical level design that gave the player the impression of going down along the buildings of a futuristic city.The circuit is incorporated into the city so that the player always has a reference point for his orientation.

The layout is very winding and requires the player to adapt his speed.The width of the roads also gives more possibilities to take the apex of the curves. The width is designed to allow the 4 players to pass each other easily without being slowed down by the collisions of the ledges.

city chase

context

City Chase is a pixel art inspired first person shooter. I made the prototype and documentation in about 40 days for my 2nd year project.I used this project to challenge myself and personally evaluate my level design skills and my knowledge of Unreal Engine.It was very rewarding to be able to overcome the problems I encountered during the project by myself.

The challenge was to design a fun prototype in a short time. So I chose simple mechanics that allowed mixing them to have an instant feeling, Shoot / Throw / Pick up.The player can't reload but can throw his weapon on the enemies: Disoriented enemies can be disarmed.To create diversity, the prototype contains 3 different weapons: A pistol, a machine gun and a baseball bat.

In this prototype, the character is chased by the police and must escape through the city to get revenge on an associate who betrayed him.The player starts in a hotel room and will have to escape through alleys and a store before going through the subway to reach a residential area.He will faces many obstacles on his way that will force him to improvise.

Level Design Document

High Concept Document

Colony

intentions

· Create a map that encourages exploration.· Orient the player's movements with a landmark.· Make the player feel small in a gigantic world.· Connect zones so that the use of vehicles is interesting.

The map contains several spotting points that allow the player to plan his approaches. The player can then evaluate the situation in front of him while staying out of sight of the enemies.On this map these points are important for the player to feel the gigantism of the landmark, and have the impression that the area is vast.

apartment

Intentions

· Vary the gameplay through space.· Create two different bomb sites:· Integrate long lines in partitioned spaces.· Create a logical progression in the game environment.

The lines allow the defenders to travel less distance before the confrontation which balances the fact that the attacking base is close to the bomb sites.They also play a role during a point retake when the bomb is planted because they force the attackers to take risks if they want to position themselves on these lines (by crossing the point for example).These defensive points allow securing the rotation of the defenders when they are in danger.

Attackers who already have the building's control must blow up their laboratory and hangar to destroy the evidence when the defenders arrive.It was logical that the attackers were closer to the bomb sites. The attackers can take advantage of the division of the defending forces, as they can reposition themselves more quickly between the sites thanks to the shorter connectors.