Off The Grid

ROLE

Senior Level Designer

GENRE

Battle Royale

RELEASE

October 2024

PLATFORM

PC | PS5 | Xbox X / S

Off The Grid is a near-future, third-person battle royale developed by Gunzilla Games.

Developed in Unreal Engine 5, OTG went into Early Access Oct. 2024, followed by a Steam release Jul. 2025.

As a level designer my main responsibility has been working on locations in the open-world, focusing on creating engaging PvP / PvE experiences while communicating the game world's overarching narrative vision.

Some of my specific responsibilities were as follows:

Design & blockout multiple large-scale open-world locations, shipped 5
Ownership of multiple locations from concept to final, managing teams of up to 3 level designers, shipped 2
Bug triage, fixes & polish for shipped locations on a live product including optimisation passes
Set dressing, terrain & foliage work
Review art passes, provide feedback during development to ensure location remains readable & navigable
Ownership of the review pipeline for gameplay-relevant assets, ensuring they conform to metrics
Balance location combat & pacing, iterate on layout & cover placement based on feedback
Level design point-of-contact for narrative missions between engineers, systems designers & technical artists
Establish the architectural style & composition of multiple locations to communicate vision
Implement narrative beats, collaborating with narrative designers & directors
Documentation on LD standards using Confluence (levels of quality, metrics, pipelines, onboarding etc.)
Mentor junior designers through regular reviews & feedback on workflows & standards
Optimised, performant & reusable world building using Unreal Engine (level instances, world partitions)

Ownership of large-scale locations

Having had ownership of 3 locations within the open world (to date, shipped 2), I was able to build and maintain an agile, responsive and trustworthy team of designers who in turn delivered some of the most engaging areas of our game world.

To date, I have shipped 2 large-scale locations from concept to final as location owner, driving deliverables within not just my team but also external teams we depend on for the shipped product. These responsibilities included:

Initial guidelines on what each location is, communication with art direction, world direction and narrative
Driving early exploratory concept art deliveries, extracting useful references for LDs
Collaborating with producers to accurately plan milestones and the initial JIRA tickets setup
Presenting paper designs, concept art and early vision to directors in an official sign-off
Presenting the approved direction in an official kick-off with all involved teams
Briefing and kickstarting LDs, splitting zones so multiple designers can work without version control issues
Regular daily syncs within the team to align on priorities and review current progress, detect problems early
Anticipate and plan for production delays and / or technical issues that may impact delivery
Drive the location through each production milestone and levels of quality checkpoint
Regular communication with the Lead LD to ensure expectations on quality and vision are being met
Coordinate with art, lighting, technical art and audio leads regarding when and where they can begin their work past the blockout stage
Guide and drive the final approved blockout through the art pass, including regular reviews to ensure design intentions are not lost or overwritten, location remains navigable and readable
Coordinate with QA teams on early and regular testing including test-cases
Schedule and host regular playtests and compile the gathered feedback into a digestible form

Abandoned Harbor: Shipped as location owner

My latest contribution to Off The Grid as a location owner came in the form of an abandoned harbor. I drove delivery of this location managing a team of 3 other LDs.

Abandonment, destruction and overgrowth were considered the primary visual identifiers of this location, something I had to plan for immediately at the blockout stage. While destruction does mostly require unique assets and can go against modular, standardized workflows, we managed to keep unique assets to a minimum through a combination of early planning and close communication with artists. Blocking out the location before it was destroyed and overtaken by vegetation, only to then add a layer of destruction and overgrowth on top, concentrated around existing modules to reduce the number of affected pieces.

On top of the destruction and overgrowth, the biggest challenge throughout development of this location was ensuring the environments stay readable and navigable. Pulling back on visual complexity and clutter in certain areas through close negotiation with the art leads allowed us to preserve readability at a glance.

While the majority of my time was spent driving this delivery both internally on the LD team and other teams involved (environment art, lighting, tech art, audio), I did get a chance to blockout a large dock terminal building meant to load / unload passengers onto ships.

Beauty shots of the shipped location include amazing work from the talented team of LDs I had the pleasure of leading:

Alexander Kullman

Petre Voinescu

Gavriil - Sotirios Papadopoulos

Luxury Resort: Shipped as location owner

My first opportunity to lead the development of a large-scale location on Off The Grid was a luxury resort.

Based on the narrative and art direction requirements, this location needed to be carved out of the mainland with direct access to water. The original vision was described to me by directors as being similar to a circuit board carved out of sand and shaped into a resort.

The biggest challenge I faced during development of this location was the initial stages of back-and-forth between LD and concept art to agree on a general shape for the resort. It being carved out of sand with direct water access would have meant long, flat strips of land with water on at least two sides, creating flat, long corridors. Early on, I took charge of this process, directly implementing early concept art iterations as quickly as possible into the engine and evaluating how feasible they could be to our gameplay needs.

Once a general shape was agreed upon between art direction and LD, the rest of the LDs were briefed and design work began.

Other contributions to the project

Throughout my time at Gunzilla, I had the opportunity to contribute to many corners of the project. Below you will find a list of some of those not highlighted above that I still found incredibly rewarding and interesting to work on.

Blockout for a reusable, closed-off mission space within the battle royale match
Blockout for a large industrial arena to host high-stakes encounters between the top teams on the map just before the end-game
Blockout for a beached and abandoned aircraft carrier
Blockout for a missile base with an attached airfield (3D sketch result of a 1-day LD Jam)
Blockout for reusable and fully modular industrial housing units

Standard workflows & pipelines

Under direct mentorship of the Lead LD, I was given the opportunity to standardize and document workflows and best practices used within the LD team. This included:

Onboarding
Workflows (level instances, packed level actors, world partitions etc.)
Toolset FAQs (what are the most common problems LDs face regularly when it comes to the engine, how are they resolved)
Levels of Quality (what are the quality checkpoints and their respective review criteria during development of a location)
Standard pipeline to ship a location from concept to final
Playable asset production (review process to ensure all world 3D assets are metrics-compliant and readable)

Mentoring other designers

Throughout my time at Gunzilla, I had the opportunity to mentor junior and intermediate designers. Ensuring tight communication between a full-remote team through regular design reviews and 1:1 sessions. I also was able to assist with the further development of multiple team members with guidance from Lead LD / World Director.

Also mentoring junior designers on best practices, how to anticipate design problems and plan for them early on, fast iteration and feedback cycles through internal playtests, designing with reuse-value in mind and implementing external feedback where possible without risking playability and our design goals.