Samsara - Design Story

Level Design · Narrative Design · Quest Design · Unreal Engine 5

2 month FTE

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Case Study Question: How can the level encourage players to make an apparently compassionate decision before challenging their assumptions?

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Level Design​

I designed the cave around player agency, spatial discovery and emotional pacing. Rather than following a single linear path, sections provide opportunities to explore, take alternative routes and approach encounters differently. These branches ultimately reconnect, allowing players to make meaningful choices without losing the intended progression.

Exploration is rewarded with unique loot, narrative moments and alternative approaches, while shortcuts allow players to make calculated risk-versus-reward decisions.

Designing for Player Choice

One encounter demonstrates this approach shortly after the player enters the deeper cave. An opening containing a lantern and spear is deliberately positioned to attract attention, while environmental clues such as a dead body and arrows can warn observant players of an impending ambush.

The player can respond by:

• Engaging the Tiriyag directly

• Taking the high ground to gain a tactical advantage

• Exploring a platforming route to bypass the encounter

This allowed me to use level geometry as a form of player choice, rather than relying on dialogue prompts or explicit branching.

I also incorporated shortcuts that trade risk for progression. In one example, the player can accept fall damage to bypass a combat encounter entirely.

Building a Mental Map

The cave makes extensive use of vertical space, with players repeatedly crossing familiar areas at different elevations. I anticipated that this could cause disorientation, so I designed the opening to establish a mental map before asking players to navigate the space.

The level begins from a high vantage point, allowing players to survey the environment and identify major landmarks before descending.

The central frozen waterfall became the primary landmark. It is visible from most major areas and provides a consistent spatial reference as players move through the vertically layered cave.

This created an intentional relationship between orientation and confusion. During intense encounters, the interconnected spaces can make the environment feel uncertain and contribute to tension. During quieter moments, the landmarks allow players to stop, reorient themselves and regain their understanding of the space.

Playtesting demonstrated that players could still struggle with navigation, leading me to strengthen the use of landmarks rather than simplifying the underlying level structure.

Guiding Without Restricting

I wanted to guide players without relying on explicit navigation markers, using leading lines, lighting, environmental openings and sightlines instead.

In the main cavern, rock formations and God Rays direct attention towards the boss room. The arena can be seen across a large vista, giving players a clear long-term destination while leaving them to decide how they reach it.

The vista also serves a narrative purpose. Its scale and beauty initially create the impression that the Tiriyags have found an almost idyllic refuge. This perception is later challenged when the player discovers the reality of their circumstances.

Spatial Storytelling

I used environmental interactions to make progression feel like a consequence of the physical space.

For example, the player can push a pillar into a mechanism, causing part of the structure to collapse and opening a shortcut. Rather than functioning like a conventional door, the interaction physically changes the environment.

The destruction also reinforces the player's growing sense that they are intruding somewhere they were not meant to be.

The level's visual composition similarly controls emotional pacing. Earlier spaces use warmer blue tones, stable forms and narrowing spaces to gradually build tension. The wider cavern shifts towards harsher blues, diagonal forms and expansive vistas, creating a stronger sense of coldness and uncertainty. Later, warmer tones and a sense of safety precede a more direct and mournful return journey.

 

Narrative Design

Designing an Unreliable Perspective

The central quest, “Feed the Starved,” begins with an intentionally incomplete account of the situation.

The player first encounters Tseringwa, a starving Preta who claims that the Tiriyags are hoarding food while they suffer. Tseringwa therefore acts as an unreliable narrator, encouraging the player to form an initial assumption:

Tseringwa is starving → the Tiriyags have food → the Tiriyags are withholding it → I should take the food.

The quest title reinforces this interpretation, allowing the player to initially feel that they are undertaking a righteous act.

I designed this deliberately because I wanted the moral dilemma to emerge from the player's own assumptions and actions, rather than presenting them with an obviously ambiguous choice from the beginning.

 

Reframing the Player's Perspective

The player's understanding begins to change as they enter the Tiriyag settlement.

The first indication is the gate. The player must break through the settlement's defences, establishing that they have physically invaded the Tiriyags' home. Their hostility can therefore be understood as defending their settlement rather than simply behaving as enemies.

A branching route then leads towards an infirmary-like area, revealing that many Tiriyags are suffering from illness brought on by Viratdeha's perpetually frozen landscape.

Finally, the player encounters an infirm, non-hostile Tiriyag who reacts with fear. From their perspective, the player is an attacker who has destroyed their defences and killed many of their remaining capable fighters.

The player is therefore not simply told that they misunderstood the situation.

They experience evidence that their actions have consequences.

The narrative shifts from:

“I am helping the starving.”

to:

“Who am I helping, and what am I taking from someone else to do it?”

 

Choice, Consequence & Mercy

After discovering the Tiriyags' circumstances, the player must decide how much food to take:

A little. A lot. Or all of it.

The choice becomes more significant because the player now understands what those supplies mean to the Tiriyags.

However, the dilemma does not end there.

Regardless of how much food the player brings back, Tseringwa remains hungry. As a Preta, their suffering cannot simply be resolved by satisfying their immediate desire.

The player is then given the choice of whether to end Tseringwa's suffering through a mercy killing.

This creates two connected moral questions:

“How much am I willing to take to help someone?”

and later:

“What does mercy mean when helping cannot end their suffering?”

Rather than providing a definitive answer, the quest allows the player to decide what they believe is justified.

 

Narrative Implementation & Playtesting

I developed the quest initially as a low-fidelity flow in Miro, which I then expanded into a full dialogue flowchart following approval from the senior designer.

I designed the dialogue alongside the flow, incorporating dialogue-system keys and implementation notes so the narrative could be translated into the game.

Playtesting also revealed an unexpected edge case: players could bypass Tseringwa's introduction, enter the Tiriyag settlement first, and approach them carrying the quest food.

I created a unique dialogue state for this situation, with Tseringwa immediately demanding the food they could smell.

Interestingly, this changed the player's emotional response. Without the original introduction, players could experience more direct pity towards Tseringwa rather than the initial feeling of righteousness.

The test also demonstrated that the environmental storytelling was working independently. Even players who skipped Tseringwa's introduction could understand that they had intruded somewhere they were not welcome, through the destroyed gate and the Tiriyags' reactions.

This reinforced my approach to narrative design:

The intended story should guide the player, but the design should still communicate when the player chooses to deviate from it.

 

Reflection

Samsara taught me to approach level and narrative design as interconnected systems.

The level determines where the player goes, what they see and how they navigate, while the narrative determines what that information means and how their understanding changes.

By combining alternative routes, environmental storytelling, visual composition, player choice and reactive dialogue, I aimed to make the player's changing understanding of the world itself part of the gameplay experience.

The project ultimately shifted my perspective on narrative design from simply writing what happens to designing what the player knows, when they learn it, and how that knowledge changes the way they interpret their actions.