Deadly Surge - Half-Life 2
Trailer
Details
“Deadly Surge” is a Half-Life 2 single-player level that takes place in the base game of Half-Life 2. This level gameplay is centered around moving electricity via wires and electrified sawblades to solve puzzles and progress.
Team Size: 1 Developer
Software: Source Engine (HL2)
Development Time: Hours / ~2 Months
Design Goals
Puzzle + Combat Mechanic
Recreate the fun of Ravenholm
Reusing Spaces
Recreate the fun of Ravenholm
Looking at what made Ravenholm fun, this naturally led me to replaying and analyzing the Ravenholm level of the base Half-Life 2 in detail and I found it so satisfying seeing the Headcrab Zombies get insta-killed by sawblades and seeing the ragdoll physics was equally entertaining.
This alongside the next design goal, I decided to use the sawblade as a puzzle mechanic.
Puzzle + Combat Mechanic
Choosing sawblades helped me reach the conclusion of wanting to use electricity as a common theme in Deadly Surge. I used sawblades in the same way they were used in Ravenholm from the base game but based my puzzles around electricity, moving, conducting, and electrocuting with sawblades that are electrified.
Reusing Spaces
I wanted to design a space that could also be reused later in the level in a different way. In Deadly Surge, the player must go back to the area between the buildings to reach their buggy, the end destination. The second time they traverse it, more enemies block their path and they have to fight them with both sawblades and their pistol to exit the level.
Post-Mortem
Knowing I wanted to use electricity set me in the right direction + I wanted to have my mechanic be used in combat and puzzles helped from the get-go because I could iterate much faster and get feedback much faster.
I had a sandbox folder with a bunch of levels where I would just test things from the beginning. Having those sandboxes where I could just quickly test an idea helped me very much.
What went well?
What needs improvement?
Flow was one of my biggest blockers/hinderances for multiple milestones. Changing the geometry this much and not locking down sooner definitely rippled into other aspects of the level that could’ve been focused on and refined to a much higher quality than they were.
Balancing enemy encounters that weren’t extremely easy or very difficult posed as a problem. Next time, I would stagger waves of different enemies to make the encounters feel somewhat challenging.
What did I learn?
Timeboxing or stopping working on something after sinking so much time into it is very important. I learned that just calling it after it reaches a good quality is important.
Teaching someone is the best way to fully understand something. I felt like I fully understood certain topics once I had to teach someone how to do it or if they asked me a very specific question.
