Level Design Jams

Here is another blog post because this is the season for things to come back from the dead 🎃🦇👻.

For the last few years I've been participating in Steve Lee's Level Design Jams. I want to do a videogame something every year and it has been a great excuse to do that. Although I'm not sure how successful I have been; I never feel bad as long as I'm still 'getting on the board'. My day job is not videogame related (software engineering for websites and other webstore stuff for scientist people).

Here is the list of the ones I have done and how I rate them of 7.


LDJ4-Mission30 - A mod of Deus Ex and probably the best of the bunch. This is considered peak 'Tomtent' (Tom+Content). 6/7 because I can still think of more I want to do with it.

LDJ10 - Memory Jar - A quake map with a little bit of modding to make it do what I want. I feel like I executed on what I wanted to do but I'm not sure what I did was any good. 4/7 because I could've done something better.

LDJ8 - Turnin Urban - I'm torn because I feel like this one has probably the weakest level design but explores a lot of things I think will come back in more Tomtent (Vending Machines, ₱esos, Camera). Made me think more about cameras and first person games. 5/7 could use more level design (almost as good as the dark night?).

Orb - 7DFPS 2023 - Not really my best work; actually this has pushed me to focus on UE5 a little more and try to work smarter and with more modular content (reuse of content is what made this possible). 3/7 formative for how bad it is; an exploration of the procedural that failed.

LDJ6 - Orb - Probably my worst work; I think I just had to make too many compromises for time to be satisfied with what I came up with. While UE gives you a lot, it basically drops you off at the bottom of a mountain and you still have to climb all the way up. 2/7 it could be worse but I hold myself to a higher standard than this.