About Pizzapocalypse

Pizzapocalypse is a cartoony 3D Platformer made by 18 second year students. You play as the chef Tim and you must use your pizza to bounce, wall jump, and stomp your way to end of the level to make your delivery to a hungry customer.

The game was released first on itch.io, where it garnered moderate success, and was given approval from our university to release on Steam, where it has received over 20,000 downloads, 100 reviews, and a 98% positive score, making it the #1 rated game published by our university on Steam. The game was voted by industry professionals as the best game of BUAS Year 2, and received a nomination for the Best Student Game of 2024.

My Role

My role within the team was one of the two Level Designers. It was our responsibility to concept, whitebox, playtest, and polish the whole level. The level is broken down into four segments – The Onboarding Area, The Market, The Canals, and the Rooftops, each one in alignment with the four-step level design process. I worked closely and collaboratively with the other level designer to ensure a sense of cohesion and flow throughout the level, so no one part of the level can truly be called “mine” or “his”, it is a product of our communication and co-operation.

The level was built with one of our core tenants in mind – Pizza. The chef must use his pizza tool to navigate the playspace, in which even basic obstacles can be conquered with the use of the pizza to bounce higher. The level was built with this fundamental pillar in mind, and was validated with playtesting data. Additionally, I designed the level with the idea of exploration within linearity in mind, implementing a multi-layered design approach, where the main path will split into multiple branches that the player can switch between and still make progress towards the end goal, encouraging replayability and fostering a sense of discovery.

Player Empathy was another big influence on the level design process. We wanted to ensure the game was accessible to a range of players, including beginners, and this informed a lot of our decisions throughout the development process. It’s a reason why there are so many ways to tackle the level and routes to take, to ensure that the level supports a variety of play styles, and that no areas of the level felt frustrating or unfair. We took great care in ensuring as few people as possible would get stuck or lost, an approach that paid off as almost everyone we observe playing the game is able to finish it, an achievement in itself.

Additional Contributions

In addition to the fundamental level design, I was also responsible for the cinematography throughout the whole level. The camera is fixed, with no player control, meaning it required a lot of manual oversight to work. I was not the one to create the camera system used in Pizzapocalypse, but I was the one who implemented it, and I made sure to take care in ensuring camera angles weren’t awkward, and made it clear which way was forward, subtly leashing the player. This process was made challenging by the multi-layered level design but it was a challenge I was able to overcome by working closely with the camera creator, and through extensive playtesting.

I was also involved with the set-dressing and beautification of the level. I worked closely with our procedural artist, and the Houdini plugin, to create the many buildings seen throughout the level, with all kinds of shapes and sizes. We used the tools she provided to give the level an appealing but clear visual style. Prop placement, such as windows, foliage, doors, graffiti, and tables was another task taken on by the level designers, facilitating a beautification pipeline that saw close collaboration between us and our environment artists.