April 2021 - Now
Previously a mobile game, The Sandbox is now the name of a massive project determined in building both a voxel-based 3D Game and a Game Editor.
Introduction
My journey starts in early 2021, in the middle of the pandemic. Freshly graduated from a Game Design Bachelor, I’m joining The Sandbox as a remote Junior Level Designer. There, I’m being onboarded by Jean-Baptiste Rachail, Lead Level Designer and Jean-Etienne Martin, Manager who willl be my mentors throughout all these years.
The Game Maker
I’m quickly putting my hands on the Game Maker, the game editing tool developed internally and used to create levels - so called “experiences”. In the beginning my goal was to simply test my new teammates' experiences to provide feedback and familiarize with the content I will be participating in creating. After a while, I was able to finalize my first few experiences playing with the available blocks & assets and of course the logic system.
As the new versions of the Game Maker come in, using my Level Designer point of view I will take part in giving feedback, improvements and debating on its features with the product team, in order to better it.
Level Design
While the Game Maker doesn't reach standards of similar softs in the game industry, it's fairly accessible. Indeed, I find it very easy to prototype, wether by using the block system to create 3D spaces or assembling "Logic" to create game mechanics.
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All the content is also stored online, as a Level Designer, I can very easily pick and place any asset from the immense library, that suits my needs for my level!
A comparison video between an experience's blockout and final phase.
An experience's blockout vs it's final look.
An experience divided in 7 levels, eaching having procedural spawners for loot, enemies & doors.
Working with partners
The Sandbox rapidly became very popular over the years, therefore we attracted a lot of brands and personalities willing to partner with the project. Depending on the number of Lands they invested in, we would have to internally produce experiences to cover their acquired territory.
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I myself have ended-up working with brands like Gucci, Playboy, Ubisoft or celebrities like Snoop Dogg, Steve Aoki, deadmau5, Paris Hilton etc.
Working with partner with such influence can sometimes be very challenging. Creating a world within their vision, from the asset requests to the blockout, can turn out in many retakes. But when the experience finally goes live, I can only be so proud of the result!
Templates
A key part of my journey at The Sandbox, was the production of Template Experiences. For a few months, I was leading a small team of a few Level Designers to create as many relevant game templates as possible. As totally game changing new features were added to the Game Maker at the time, the need of teaching our player & creator base grew. We started by brainstorming over the new mechanic possibilities. Continuing with a lot of back and forth between the game editor and the actual game, on which we would do mutliplayer testing sessions, we came up with a go / no go templates list. A bit of polishing and dressing by our fellow Level Artists was done, and voilà, +25 new templates were born!
These are now all available to the public!
Events
Part of my role at The Sandbox is to transmit my knowledge of the Game Maker to the public. With 3+ years of expertise, I was able to attend multiple events: Hong Kong Creator's Day, Paris Bootcamp... in which I was enroled to teach and help creators enhance their building capabilities. These were pretty challenging but always very fun!