Closing the Loop
In Part 1 I talked about how different gameplay elements were made with rules for consistency, but no one wants to experience it without engaging environments that feel cohesive, learnable, and fun to explore. Designers also need some freedom in order to express their creativity. To make both ideas possible, levels had a framework for style, structure, scale and more.Color and Lighting
Besides the overall theming, each area of a zone had to decide on a general color palette. The mapper could decide which color should be most prominent/a base, then use different contrasting and complimentary colors in important areas. The only exception to this was space around keycard doors being colored like the key they require. Keeping this basic color structure lets places be more distinct, and visually clear. Mappers were able to easily pick out colors in a scene that would subconsciously draw attention. These cues quickly create a mental map for players.


Doors and Windows
Presenting the Ion Fury Door Bible! Yes, it’s true - they’ve got their own guide courtesy of Max. Doors were an important early decision, as they cause changes to the environment when opening and closing. Things might get stuck on them or between them. Inconsistent door designs create confusion and frustration for the player, and frequently in the Build Engine also cause death! To paraphrase a bit, doors need to be lit if they’re usable, including lighting up important doors as they unlock. No fake/false doors except if absolutely necessary for a convincing environment. Those doors must be dimly shaded and have a “perma-locked sound effect” trigger added. A sound effect when moving is a must - the sound tells you when something has happened, including an enemy coming in the room!

Objects
It was important to maintain consistency in all of the levels. I worked closely with Max and others to decide on things as mundane as general door size (576-1536 Build units), average hallway width (1024-2048), and the size and placement of objects. Sometimes as simple as “all electrical sockets should be 2048 above the floor or counter”, or as complicated as “fire extinguisher explosions should always leave wall damage”. These kinds of decisions not only make the levels feel more coherent and connected, they also affect the believability of the game environments and the gameplay itself. An example of this is that switches and buttons for normal progression were placed at “eye level”, the height of a centered view, so they could be easily pressed without having to do small up and down micro-actions. While already frustrating with mouse input, it’s even more awkward when you’re using a gamepad or keyboard-only controls (which the game also technically supports). Rooms couldn’t be random collections of objects. A bar should have bottles and glasses, an office should have desks and chairs, and so on. This gives a sense of place, and the impression that it’s truly lived in and not just an empty shell. And even though they look cool as extra detailing decals, since we had breakable walls the designers had to be careful not to use large Wall Crack sprites and suggest to players that a wall can be destroyed.


Secrets
Speaking of secrets! The usual rule of thumb was 5 per area, with some simple/obvious and a few more difficult. Though since secrets allowed a large element of freedom, the level designers had lots of fun and went nuts with them! Ion Fury has 3 kinds of secrets:- Unmarked/Easter Eggs. Sometimes these are things just off the beaten path, but they can also include fun extra hidden easter eggs that are hard to find or difficult to execute and don’t count toward your total percentage.
- Regular secrets. A Secret Stash! These are the five expected secrets, and can be of any style as long as enough normal experimentation would find it. Not everyone likes every type of secret, but every secret was tested with and without a hint guide to double check that it could be reasonably completed by someone really going for it! These are the only secrets that count toward your secret percentage.
- Mega Secrets. Extremely challenging secrets that every player might not find - only one allowed per zone!

What’s in an Aftershock?
We had such a solid and balanced base from Ion Fury that for Aftershock we could be more playful. Players are expected to have already played the main campaign and so-- We thought c’mon, let’s get nuts.Level Up
The long story arc in Ion Fury’s main campaign often left the player stuck in underground areas. This time we wanted to focus on more varied environments with lots of outdoor locations. One important early decision to help with this was to go with a more theme heavy approach that makes each map something you can describe in a few words. Here are some of the thematic elements from our “art gallery map”.


Get Messy
The pacing of combat difficulty in Ion Fury helped ease you into encounters with each enemy, but for Aftershock, players know what’s up! So the pacing was sped up, with more challenging enemies from Ion Fury appearing much sooner. New and alternate enemies have their own attacks and movements for players to learn, and most of them have quicker reaction times than the original ones.

Maximum Power
Shelly has some really powerful attacks in Ion Fury, but most are balanced in some way to not be completely overpowering. However, since the bad guys up the ante in Aftershock, Shelly gets to respond in kind. There are a few new instant Items, but we used the new pocket we introduced in Ion Fury 2.0 to introduce more PowerUps. Now Shelly can incinerate her enemies with flame traps, give every gun a spectacular boost with new attack modes, and slow things down to look cool while doing it. We also upgraded the regular arsenal! There’s some new ammo types for the Disperser, and also a new much fan-requested weapon that will really wreck Heskel’s day.
Highway Star
A key feature for Aftershock has been the bike. It’s something we’ve wanted since the early days of Ion Fury itself, and here we finally got to do it! It was one of the earliest things prototyped and done as a proof-of-concept for an expansion. It had to be fast, agile, weighty, and easy to handle with different inputs. It had to feel good to actually use, not the clunky mess people know from some other Build Engine games. So we settled on a quad-copter hover bike with beefy armor and infinite rockets to pummel enemies with. Even some of the toughest dudes are no match for Shelly’s blistering power when she revs up that motor.