There were a few iterations that I had to go through when designing the levels for the game. The arena was pretty much the easiest to design because I already know what are the main props that was suppose to be there. I also added the the blood fountains at the side of the arena later on as a means to spawn the Brute minion and the Heads as well as give the impression of a Japanese hell where blood was flowing everywhere as part of the demon's personality. The arena was build on the ego of the boss showing off himself as well as keeping certain things of how he was sealed here such as the Altar below his throne to show that he has been imprison here but putting him up there to show his ego that he was able to escape and able to beat the divine.
I also wanted to keep true to the mythology that is why I decided to build the arena on top of a mountain as the mythology says when he was exiled he escaped to the mountain and stated to create demons and kill humans as well as create a hole at the side of the mountain to show the blood moon powering Shuten Doji as the battle goes on as the part of the blood moon story.
The first actual deigns of the outer level of the tutorial was based on a Kumado Kado which was a fox shrine on a mountain terrain. At this time there were 3 levels, Tutorial, Kyoto (training) then the arena.
First thing that I did was, creating the spaces and areas for the level such as action spaces, resting space and the purpose of the level.
Reference Blockout and Sketch for Old Level can be seen here: Old Tutorial level Folder
Then I started to sketch the tutorial area describing the areas and blocked it out in unreal. Unfortunately, the levels were way too big and we don't have much level mechanics to work with leaving the big levels empty and pointless.
So, this is where I had to massively scale down both levels and merge the tutorial and training area into just 1 area that teaches the player the mechanics as well as giving them time to experiment before entering the arena.
From here I created the level that we called Kyoto (because the environment reference were from Kyoto that we modified). There were 3 parts in this level that combined into one the bamboo forest, Nijo castle and mountain top areas each having a different purpose for teaching the player. Below are the sketches.
Bamboo Forest sketch
Nijo Castle Sketch
Mountain top Sketch
The sketch was done first describing the levels and the things in it. The bamboo forest is where the player will learn the basic movement mechanics like jumping, evade and running. The Castle area is where the player will train for combat and learning about the 2 modes and the mountain top is the experimental area where the player has their final fight using what they have learn previously before entering the arena.
After the sketch I blocked out the level adding all the elements from the sketch into one UE4 level then passing the level with the level information to the environmental artist to do the environment and lighting and the programmer to code in the tutorial.
The level folder for the current outer level can be seen here: New Kyoto Level Folder