Creator Spotlight : Alexandre Zenga - Lead Level Designer

Hell is Us is now out and we hope you are enjoying the game! On our end, we're going to keep unveiling the work and minds of some of the creators behind the game in our Creator Spotlight series of articles. Today, we chat with Alexandre Zenga, Lead Level Designer on Hell is Us! Can you tell us about your journey as a video game developer and how you came to be working on Hell is Us as lead level designer?

From my younger years playing the old classics as a kid all the way up to the big blockbusters we see today, I’ve always been captivated and amazed by video games. Back in the day, like many young boys of my age, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and video games were my passion and my refuge.

As a young adult in the mid 2000’s, I learned about a newly created school right here in my hometown of Montréal, that was specialized with video game specific programs called Campus Ubisoft at the time (now Campus ADN). That was my calling! I applied to their Level Design class and got selected.

After a few years of experience in the industry, I joined Funcom in 2010 where I met Bruno Parenteau (Game Director) a fellow Gameplay Designer then, and we quickly became friends. After the release of The Secret World and the unfortunate fate of Funcom Montréal, Bruno joined his long-time friend Yves Bordeleau (CEO) at his new studio which became Rogue Factor. In 2013, during the early stage of development of Mordheim: City of the Damned, Yves and Bruno quickly realized they needed a Level Designer on the team, and they recruited me.

Fast forward over the years, we shipped Mordheim: City of the Damned, Necromunda: Underhive Wars and Jonathan Jacques-Belletête (Creative Director) joined us. After the team grew up in size and strength, I was offered the opportunity, and the honor, to become the Lead Level Designer on Hell is Us.

Considering the player-plattering philosophy of Hell is Us (no quest markers, no map, etc), how do you find the balance between letting the player figure things out by himself and not being too obtuse and thus frustrate the player?

That was a real challenge! While we wanted to give enough information to the player, we didn’t want it to be too “on the nose” either, it wouldn’t have felt natural. We had to adjust the dosage depending on what type of content we were working on, especially the main storyline. We were very meticulous with our landmarks placement and made sure they were visible enough. We don’t want you to feel lost, but we also want you to have those “Eureka!” moments that feels great when you figure something out.

Some secrets are hidden in plain sight, while others are so deeply hidden, you may only discover them in a subsequent playthrough. It was very fun to implement. We even had our own internal difficulty scale for those secrets, it went like this: easy, medium, hard and “must go on Reddit”. We hope you have as much fun uncovering them as we had designing them. Good luck!

Hell is Us features both open zones and dungeons. What were the specific challenges that you faced in designing these types of locations?

Both had to feel different but still needed to follow the design principles and core pillars of Hell is Us. Generally speaking,