teeth
I joined TEETH about midway through development right after the first completed prototype was playable. From there, I worked as part of the design team, working on level design and cinematics, as well as assisting with enemies and animations. TEETH was made playable on the convention floor for both GDC 2024 and PAX EAST 2024.
Annihilate toothy abominations with a gnawing hunger in a nightmarish 2.5D hack-and-slash game. Hoard their teeth to fuel your rage, traversing the endless dark-domain created by an omnipotent overseer.
LEVEL DESIGN
Creating the Boss Arena
Level Block Out
Boss Arena w/ Final Art and Enemies
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The Boss Arena that caps off Teeth was designed by me. The idea for this room was to have a larger space to house an exciting confrontation with the ‘Mama Birther’ boss.
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The initial blockout was a more narrow, asymmetrical space compared to the existing rooms in the prototype at the time. With this assessment and direction of adhering to the established designs of existing spaces, the room was reconfigured into a more symmetrical, spacious arena for the Player to move around in.
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From there, giving the room a visual identity was the next task, which I also spearheaded. The idea was simple: use the top and bottom parts of the level for placement of gigantic jawlines to surround the navigable space. In other words, the room was made to look like it was existing inside a mammoth sized mouth surrounded by massive fangs.
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With the Boss Arena in a good place, all that was left was to replace temporary art assets with the final versions made by the art team. In the final version, you can see the concept of gigantic fangs along the edges of the arena carried over into the design of the stalagmites, which retain the same toothy, sharp-fang characteristics.
Creating Room 4
Level Block Out
Room 4 w/ Final Art and Enemies
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The task for this specific area of the game was to create another intense space preceding the boss encounter. In addition, the room was to have a unique layout and shape from the existing rooms comprising the game.
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Following the completion of blocking-out the Boss Arena, design for Room 4 took into account the way previous rooms had also been laid out. The area was designed as a narrow, somewhat symmetrical space for the Player to tread carefully and avoid enemy oppression.
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Similar to how the Boss Arena’s iteration played out, Room 4’s focus following approved design was crafting a unique visual aesthetic. Temporary assets including animal teeth and manzanita shrubs were used to evoke a dangerous foresty area, while still retaining the sharp tooth motif.
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The final version was updated with the assets created by the art team to maintain the sharp branches of teeth the temp manzanita assets were used to convey. The layout of the room itself remained unaffected as well.
I was tasked with creating the opening cutscene for TEETH, beginning with a simple storyboard with some dialogue. The dialogue is currently being updated, but the finished version of the cutscene, including pacing, transitions, and animations are complete.
CINEMATICS
Storyboard
Final Version
ENEMIES
I also did some work on the enemies for TEETH. Specifically, I took the ‘Immobile Bug’ enemy provided by the art team and used its separated parts in photoshop to create an Idle animation, in addition to two unique attack animations. This was done via the Timeline feature where I moved each part of the enemy’s body to simulate movement.
As for the aforementioned ‘Mama Birther’ enemy, I’ve provided the concepts for the ranged and area-of-effect attacks for the boss to use.
Screenshots
