ELLIE TSAMOULI
Genre: Horror, Narrative-Driven
Development Time: 3 Weeks
Title: Level Designer
Engine: Unreal Engine 5
Status: Prototype
ANNIE
Overview
A Girl Named Annie is a narrative-driven psychological horror experience about a young woman returning to her childhood home, where a mysterious dollhouse reshapes the environment as the story unfolds.
Tasks & Responsibilities
Concept & Pre - Production
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Identified level goals and gameplay intentions for each phase
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Paper-designed puzzles and room layouts ( sketches, 2D Maps)
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Greyboxing proof-of-concept spaces validating puzzle mechanics and spatial relations
Development & Implementation
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Built a modular kit for fast iteration and implementation
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Spline-based tools to add variation to modular layouts.
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Designed 14 room layouts
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Implemented 3 environmental puzzles
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Placed Interactables for gameplay balance and puzzle flow
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Did a decoration pass and optimization checks (navmesh, lighting, collision)
TW: Sensitive Topics Discussed
Design Process & Challenges
I joined the project early in development and contributed to the core game design, including mechanics, narrative structure, and level layout. During pre-production, the team and I prototyped the gameplay as a physical board game before moving into the digital prototype. From the beginning, the idea was to make the house more than just the setting: the house itself was part of the puzzle.
Using a dollhouse in the basement, players could twist and rearrange rooms to open new routes and gradually access previously unreachable spaces. Within those rooms were individual environmental puzzles, while an entity stalked the player between them and became more aggressive as the story progressed. This created my main level design challenge: how could the same spaces support exploration, puzzles, storytelling, and an evolving threat without overwhelming the player?
I approached the rooms as a balance between tension, discovery, and environnmental storytelling. Multiple routes, hiding opportunities, and controlled sightlines gave players space to read and react to the entity. Curves and obstructed views created uncertainty while still providing enough information to anticipate another presence. During environmental puzzles, however, the doors locked and kept the entity out, deliberately giving players space to focus on solving the puzzle and uncovering the story.
The rearrangement mechanic created another challenge: there was no guaranteed direction from which players would enter a room. Each space had to remain readable and recognizable from multiple angles while still communicating important environmental and narrative information.
This became especially important during playtesting, when we noticed players repeatedly checking the house map to orient themselves. I didn't want navigation to depend on UI when learning and observing the house was part of the experience, so I gave rooms distinct colour identities tied to the emotions and stories they represented. In later playtests, players could differentiate spaces more easily and recognize where they were through the environment itself.
Concepting Process & Development
Environmental Puzzles
Reflection
This project was complex to design, but a lot of fun. It really showed me how important it is to understand core mechanics and gameplay systems before trying to build good levels. Using physical prototypes was incredibly helpful for exploring and communicating ideas early on, even before any digital levels existed. Working within strict technical constraints was challenging and required a lot of quick thinking, but...we designers are hacks after all.
If I were to start the project again, I would explore adding greater elevation variation and develop additional tools to support it. I would also aim to further diversify the rooms and experiment with some alternative structural connections to make their relationships and transitions a bit more engaging.