Started with a basic plan using the “game design document”.

I had a general Crafting and Item progression sketched out.

Only after i started actually implementing the level did I realize that the player doesn’t have much choice, every play through will be pretty much the same linear progression.

• Craft bundle of sticks to make a fire
• Craft an Axe cause that’s all you can craft with the nearby resources
• With the Axe, chop some trees that were blocking a path which provides access to more materials
• Craft a Pick with the newly available materials
• With the Pick, mine some boulders that were blocking a path to the rest of the map

I had to design a way to give the player more agency.

The first step was to decide on the first crafting choice, an Axe or a Pick.

I was able to wrap my head around designing a simple 2 branch decision tree. Once the player crafts one tool (Axe or Pick), it provides them access one part of the map with a lot of other things they can do. At some point they would then need to craft the other tool to not only access another part of the map, they can now access everything.

In essence:

• Area 1 requires tool A
  • Area 3 is requires Tool B
• Area 2 requires tool B
  • Area 4 is requires Tool A
• Area 5 and 6 requires both tool A and B

I needed to brainstorm what are in these areas, I also needed to spend quality time with our new 8 month old twins. Here’s how I modeled the SinglePlayer_1 map.

In this timelapse video capture of the 5 hours it took me (over about 3 days) to build this single player level, i’m demonstrating

• Setting up the initial linear crafting progression
• Evolving it to a simple 2 branch decision tree
• Evolving that to 4 basic paths, N, E, SE, SW
• Determined what the minimal requirements to survive all 9 nights when the wolves (currently foxes) come to destroy your tent, you need to have your tent completely fenced in. The minimum number of fences required is 10 pieces, which maths out to 20 lumber (2 wood each) and 10 hemp ropes (2 hemp strings each)
• Found some bugs, so i did a bit of debugging

Here’s the latest decision tree that this map is based on.

Play the single player demo