Level Designers Reveal Early Stages in “Blocktober” Hashtag

How do game levels look at the early stages of development? Naughty Dog’s Michael Barclay launched a huge trend on Twitter that might give you an answer. The “blocktober” hashtag made some of the developers reveal a new look at levels from AAA games. We know you’re more familiar with this kind of stuff than some of the gamers, but you still can’t miss the thing.

Blockouts are meant for studying the scale of an area and planning how the player will follow with his path. No details here, no textures, complex vegetation or other stuff. This stage is all about flexibility, so that developers can change elements. Developers can also use these early prototypes to test gameplay.

Here are some of the examples from Twitter:

Killzone Mercenary (Pete Ellis‏)

Uncharted Lost Legacy (Nicholas Lance)

Tacoma (Kate Craig):

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (Andrew Crawshaw)

Payday 2 (via Jason Mojica)

Uncharted 4 (Em Schatz‏)

Titanfall (via Jason McCord‏)

Gears of War 4 (Nic Wechter)

Blacklight (Rick Lesley)

Uncharted 2 multiplayer (Kurt Margenau)

Sniper Elite 4 (Beck Shaw)

Star Citizen (Sean Noonan)

Prologue and the Swarmak battle from Gears 4 (Nic Wetcher)

Beginning of Skyforge (Yaroslav Kravtsov)

Emerge (Joe Radak)

Enslaved – Odyssey to the West – Peter Field‏ 

Thanks to Den Wer for helping us arrange this list.

Click the hashtag link to check out more examples from Twitter.