Joel Burgess is the Studio Head and a co-founder of Soft Rains. He has previously contributed in studio and design leadership roles for Bethesda Game Studios, Capybara, and Ubisoft Toronto. He has led teams of all sizes, and is well-known for his contributions to open world and level design through articles, lectures, and mentorship.
Hi, I’m a Level Designer.
I’m Joel, and I wear a few hats at Soft Rains. But the one I’ve worn the longest over my whole career is my Level Design hat.
I remember when I first created a digital wall. I’d been a curious kid about games and computers, but it wasn’t until 1997 that I visited a friend whose mom had recently bought him a copy of “Level Design Secrets of Duke Nukem 3D” at the local mall. Armed with a CD-ROM and the BUILD engine, he showed me how to manifest a wall with a simple press of PgUp. I was hooked.
From there, I cut my teeth modding games throughout the late-90’s golden age of first-person shooters and immersive sims, eventually making my way into the professional game industry, where I’ve done level design on everything from third-person action brawlers to first-person dungeon crawlers, and even a color-matching puzzle… trawler?
Anyway.
Level design is my first love as a game creator, and it has been SUCH a joy to bring that skillset to what the Ambrosia Sky team has created. So I’m here to give a detailed breakdown of one of our levels from the project: The Bhat Communications Tower.
This level (which you can play in Ambrosia Sky: Act One) sees Dalia exploring a small communications array built into an asteroid near Saturn. She’s sent to collect organic samples that have taken root in unusual places. Along the way, she’ll have to contend with fungal hazards, disrupted systems, and the emotional complexity of walking in the footsteps of the person your old flame fell in love with after you left home. WOO! Sounds like a banger! Let’s peel back the process.
Where do Levels Come From?
We’ll begin at the beginning: where did the foundation of this level originate? Two main ideas drove it: one rooted in world-building, and another borne from a design experiment.
The world-building piece originated with “The Playhouse”, a location we’d planned and scrapped in an early phase of the project. This was an asteroid we had envisioned as a series of public spaces which the people of the Cluster had built around infrastructure tech, including a long-range broadcast beacon. We always think of the Cluster through the lens of its people and the community they’d form over multiple generations — this familiar, human element provides a strong narrative counter to strange and speculative elements of our sci-fi setting. So the idea of people building a community folk theatre in an asteroid bristling with space-age communication gear felt great to us.
While the larger concept of the Playhouse remains on the shelf, I still liked the idea of a communications array overlooking Saturn’s rings, and our plot had a use for this kind of location as well.
The design experiment, on the other hand, was comparatively abstract — I wanted to try making a level with a really small footprint. By the time work began on this level, the game was well into production. Our core mechanics, especially cleaning and tether movement, were taking shape, and we’d built some other levels already. I was curious to stress-test those learnings by situating them in a small physical space with a high density of exploration and movement. Put another way: I wanted to build a level that really made use of its nooks-n-crannies.
Massing Phase
I was able to kickstart my work on this level by borrowing an existing room sketch I’d previously made using the modular kit created for the game by Thomas Fraser. (My love of modular level-building is well documented, and the ability to “doodle” in a test level and have those doodles be useful for later ideas is one of the great side perks of working this way)
I chose this “Atrium” room to start with because I thought the high-ceilinged central space would give good opportunities for players to use the tether or low gravity, and I’d get good use from the way the columnades partition the space to create a puzzle flow using our electrical simulation. I also just liked the cathedral-like shapes. (Fun fact: in the project files, this level is called “Power Church”)
The next room — and I really wanted to limit myself to two rooms for this layout — would house the titular Communication Tower. I wanted the tower itself to be an obelisk-like, central feature for two reasons: first, its height would showcase the mobility options offered by tether and gravity. Second, the tower shape would require players to navigate around a central target to get ideal lines of sight whilst cleaning.
Sequencing the Player Experience
As I blocked out the dimensions, I was also thinking about how I wanted to sequence the level or create a sense of pacing & flow.
I wanted the pace of the level to be somewhat slow and deliberate. This is supported by the primary objective of the level, which focuses on finding a number of samples hidden throughout the space, and would play into my goal of emphasizing “nooks-n-crannies” exploration. This is how I imagined the flow playing out:
Dramatically frame a clear — but “locked” — primary route upon first entry into the Atrium.
Once confronted with that blocking problem, I figured the partitioned side chambers would be the most likely “second read” of the environment. So I wanted to visually present players with a solution to the blocked-path problem — but without an obvious visual path to reach it.
From there, I wanted players to build a mental map of the space, to imagine how the visually connected compartments might be physically connected, ultimately discovering a workaround path through an opening high above the floor.
Once the player escapes the “Atrium”, the “Tower” room is much more free-form, with players able to access the vertical space with their tether or, optionally, by locating and disabling the gravity controls.
Using Electrical Simulation as Puzzle Element
To help create the Atrium puzzle flow, I would be relying on the Resource System — a simulation built for Ambrosia Sky that underpins systems like the flow of electricity. The Resource Simulation is incredibly powerful, but at this point in the project, we hadn’t quite decided how to harness that potential and communicate it to the player.
I could, Dear Reader, tell you that I cruised through this step of creation, guided by my pristine design vision. But that would be a lie — I struggled mightily on this room for some time. To summarize my woes with the clarity of retrospect: my early attempts to incorporate the resource system for a power puzzle were too complicated, the physical flow of the room was too obscure, and the possibility space of the power simulation was too broad.
It was frustrating to feel stuck on this puzzle, but spinning my wheels also helped clarify some design decisions about how we use our powerful resource simulation as a gameplay element.
To help you follow along, here’s a primer on the way power works in Ambrosia Sky:
Entities in the world can be either a “source” or a “sink” for a particular resource, in this case, electrical power.
We typically use a generator as an intuitive power source. These are often paired with toggle switches.
Most sinks have some “powered” function. Doors can be opened, for example, and lighting fixtures illuminate rooms, etc.
Wires are essentially long resource sinks that create a physical, visual connection between sources and sinks.
Electrical fungus creates “bad power”. If this “bad power” touches any part of an electrical simulation, it “Overloads” the entire network of connected sources and sinks.
Blue, “overloaded” entities malfunction (eg: an overloaded door cannot be opened) — and can electrocute the player. (ouch)
Cleaning the source of “bad power” removes the Overloaded state, reverting to the normal Powered or Unpowered state.
As this power system design clarified itself, I was simultaneously getting early team feedback that the level was too confusing. The power puzzle was too open-ended, without a clear “beginning”, and the side chambers were too difficult to find a way into.
So I made the Atrium a more explicitly two-step power puzzle, and sequenced it this way:
Overloaded wires lead in two directions from the exit door, helping guide players’ eyes to the side chambers.
I created a break in the barrier so players could walk directly into the left-side chamber, where cleaning away electrical fungus restores “good” power to the puzzle door — but leaving it unpowered.
There’s no obvious way into the right-side chamber, but there is a large pass-through opening near the ceiling. Breaking the symmetry of the built environment was a sort of tutorial; some players would proactively engage the mental map problem, thinking about how the spaces might connect and seeking an entry. Others fell back on cleaning, looking for mission samples, and general exploration — but given the small size of the environment, I didn’t have to worry too much about them becoming bored, lost or frustrated, since the opening is pretty large and tends to be found relatively quickly, even accidentally. (I did make sure to seed some fungus to grow through the opening, however, since it is both a visual and a gameplay attractor)
Beyond the pass-through, players discover a “back-of-house” route into the right-side chamber, where power generators can be fired up. Now players can freely use the doors in this area and progress to the Tower room.
One nice thing about a puzzle design like this in a richly simulated game — you can totally play the steps out of order. There’s not a ton of complex, choreographed scripting. I’m just using the same simulation systems as the player — meaning some folks will find the upper passage first, and that’s okay! This fluid, simulation-first approach also offers players interesting opportunities to be creative. It’s led to some surprising speed-run strategies!
Once players exit the Atrium, they’re into the Tower room. As mentioned before, the Tower room was much more straightforward — its main purpose was to house a big vertical element, after all. That said, it evolved iteratively over time and in team playtests, as I looked for opportunities to make this area interesting to explore and to serve the larger “nooks-and-crannies” goal of dense exploration.
Main Objective & Exo-Fungus Passes
Each level in Ambrosia Sky has a main objective, and as mentioned earlier, this level’s objective archetype is a sort of scavenger hunt for special samples. So as the large shapes of the level were nailed down, I started looking for hiding places that would give players a sense of satisfaction, surprise, helpful guidance — or some combination of those.
The free-form nature of this objective archetype complemented the level’s compact size, since retreading to find a missed sample rarely requires covering much ground. It also allows players to switch focus between explicit challenges (like puzzle solutions) and more passive “zen” play, such as general cleaning or skill play like optimizing fungus harvesting.
Speaking of which, a huge part of Ambrosia Sky level design involves working with exo-fungus colonies, which are impactful to level design for several reasons:
Size! Large colonies can create flow, block sightlines, and even act as platforms at the scale of architecture.
Dynamicism — Fungal colonies aren’t always passive. They often grow in response to the player, giving level design a useful way to create drama, draw the eye, and call out points of focus in the environment.
Gameplay Friction — our fungi blur the line between environment and enemy. The placement of explosive fruit and electricity-overloading tendrils are as much a part of encounter design as placing enemies and traps in a more traditional FPS.
Crafting & Progression — fungal fruits are also the resource that drives the progression loop, which adds a skill axis for players who want to optimize their harvests. Destroying fungus indiscriminately squanders valuable samples.
Replay — Players can revisit levels to go for 100% cleaning coverage, which is more of a sandbox play form, and puts fungus colony placement on center stage once the main objective has been completed.
I could write an entire article about working with our toolset to generate and tune exo-fungus colonies! But for the sake of this one, I’ll highlight one of the happy realities of working with our fungi. The fungus's dynamic nature makes it very tolerant of tweaking and iteration, especially once the rigid architectural elements are in place. This is a fun way of working, and it feels simultaneously like an additional layer of architecture, as well as a traditional encounter pass in the way you might add enemies and traps to a more traditional, combat-driven game.
The dynamic nature of our tooling also gives level designers more flexibility to solve problems with fungal colony generation that might otherwise require changes to level architecture or uniquely scripted gameplay.
Integrating Narrative
While the physical level design took shape, its place in the overall world and story of Ambrosia Sky was also coming into focus. While the old “Playhouse” location concept was no longer required or planned for in our story arc, the concept of a comms array still fit very well into our world-building for the Cluster. We were still especially fond of the idea that community members had repurposed this piece of industrial, long-range technology for day-to-day local broadcasts — and how they might use that in a time of crisis.
Our Narrative Director, Kait, was able to build on this foundation through “found narrative,” which largely means the bits of text scattered across the level.
We think a lot about the Cluster's generational history. Dalia’s generation is tied to the legacy of their parents, who themselves are descended from the first frontierspeople to establish the Cluster community. This connection is subtle, but it’s where the name of the location — Bhat Communications Tower — comes from. Bhat is a family name, and Ila Bhat is the current operator. The story of Ila unfolds through the found narrative here and overlaps with Dalia’s history, enriching Ambrosia Sky's overall world-building.
Finalizing
Kait’s work here is just one of the many ways that folks at Soft Rains collaborate to bring a level from its initial form to a final product.
Team playtesting is one of the first and biggest impacts; I’m still amazed at how much of a difference it makes to get an idea out of my head or my notebook and into the engine, where peers can run around and offer critique. I try to get to this step as early as possible, especially if I’m getting stuck on problems that will get quickly dislodged by playtest feedback.
Beyond playtest, there are many hands, even on our small team, that touch a level on its journey to the player. Custom musical and audio work goes into each level, quality testing and performance are areas of important expertise, lighting and color script efforts elevate functional illumination into artwork, other designers ensure systems are connected and appropriately used, editor tooling and codebase work make my work possible to do at all, and the list goes on.
Level design can feel like a solitary craft at times — and some of my favorite moments with it happen when I’m deeply engrossed in the editor, thinking through player experience. But at its best, level design is both the showcase of a team’s collective work across disciplines and the product of collaboration through feedback and implementation.
I hope you’ll appreciate the end result when you play this level and the rest of what we’ve created for you in Ambrosia Sky: Act One.
If you want more insights on a different level from the game, check out this archive from our recent 24-hour Extra Life stream, where Joel & Sofy show off a previously unrevealed level for the game.
If you want to know more about the development of Ambrosia Sky, take a look at our prior dev logs that cover our main character Dalia, the role of a Scarab, the art & audio direction of the game, a look at the tech & design behind our cleaning mechanics, and an overview of what Ambrosia Sky is.
Ambrosia Sky: Act One, plus its soundtrack, is also available now to purchase!
View game page