Deity Cell
Deity Cell is a student project on which I became lead designer six months into development. The project was later accepted into Michigan State's business incubator, Spartan Innovations, and the game development minor, where the team received mentorship from industry professionals.
Contributions
Conceptualized, designed, and prototyped a new puzzle-focused design direction for the game
Created extensive pre-production documentation of core systems
Designed a metroidvania level area that highlights the battery mechanics in an evocative setting
Created and implemented all visual effects
My favorite puzzle demonstrating the battery mechanic
System Design in an Existing World
When I was brought onto the project, extensive work on worldbuilding had already been done, but the existing prototype did not meet the team’s experiential goals.
After several weeks of pre-production, I created extensive documentation of potential systems that the game could have, while maintaining their original vision. The one that stuck was the battery system, a pervasive power source that could affect everything in the world from creatures to the environment.
Though this battery system became a north star for the game's design direction, balancing the existing worldbuilding with the mechanics was a recurring design challenge addressed through the frequent iteration of the level design.
Ideation for different level sections
Level sections implemented into the game
Level Design
My process for designing levels was first to enumerate all the mechanics and features present in the game, and then find interesting or surprising interactions between them. These interactions would become the mechanical beats that the overall level was paced around.
After these mechanical beats were determined, I pieced them together into a thematic location (such as "manufacturing" or "storage").
Finally, I would add secrets to hidden or difficult to reach areas that the level design naturally afforded. This would typically come after a round of playtesting, when players would find ways to get to places I hadn't foreseen.
One goal was avoiding "lock and key" progression and instead locking progression behind the interesting or surprising interactions. The world is open enough so that if a player is stuck in one section, they may explore a new area of the map.
Our mentor playtests a later build of Deity Cell
Playtesting and Iteration
Mechanical beats were tested both in isolation and in the larger context of the level for difficulty and pacing.
The level section would then be appropriately tuned, reworked, or cut entirely, depending on the playtest, before being integrated into the larger Metroidvania zone.
In addition to level design iteration, every aspect of the game was reviewed weekly by our team's industry mentors who gave invaluable feedback on everything from the character controller to the art direction.
Here are some examples of visual effects I created for Deity Cell
Visual Effects
The art direction for the game was influenced by a 3DS aesthetic like Metroid: Samus Returns, so it was important that certain aspects of the game–the resolution, the gaps in the pixels on the LCD screen, and slight pixel blurring–were present in our visuals.
I was responsible for implementing the rendering pipeline to achieve this look. We opted to exclude certain things from the post-processing over the main game, such as text for clarity.
Highlights of visual effects I created include the wire system and the flexible terminal display, which were integral for clear level design. Their flexibility allowed them to be easily added to the level and immediately look integrated into the environment.
© 2025 Langston Key
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contact at keylangs@msu.edu