Dishonored: Dunwall City Trials
About the game
Enter the world of the Outsider in Dishonored: Dunwall City Trials, the first add-on pack for the critically-acclaimed first-person action game by Arkane Studios.Your combat, stealth and mobility skills will be put to the test as you make your way through 10 distinct maps that feature a variety of challenges.
Creatively combine your supernatural abilities, weapons and gadgets to eliminate as many targets as possible, fight off waves of tallboys, guards, weepers and thugs, or take out targets in a non-stop run of drop assassinations.
Dunwall City Trials also features a new set of achievements and trophies as well as a global online leaderboard.
Release date: 11 December 2012
Platforms: PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Developer: Arkane Studios
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Engine: Unreal Engine 3
My role
Of the 10 challenges included with this DLC, I was the Level Designer in charge of 2 of these : Train Runner which is a mobility challenge, and Oil Drop which is an action one.Train Runner challenges players to reach the finish zone as fast as possible, using mobility tools at your disposal and going through a level with various obstacles.
Oil Drop is focused on mastering marksmanship, with whale oil tanks being thrown at the player, some of them triggering special effects.
More info about my work
After finishing Dishonored production, the Level Design team pitched and prototyped plenty of challenges focused on mastering a specific gameplay of the game.From all these prototypes, 10 were selected to then get fleshed out and polished during a few weeks, sometimes also having an Expert version of the challenge.
I initially did the prototype for 4 of the 10 challenges (Train Runner, Bend Time Massacre, Oil Drop and Assassin's Run) and then focused on Train Runner and Oil Drop while other designers were in charge of the rest.
This meant defining the rules for the challenges, the score systems, the achievements, etc... but of course also working on the level itself, in collaboration with a Level Artist as always.
Train Runner also included an Expert version where the player only has enough mana to perform one Blink and will have to play with mana recharge time to make the most ouf of this, and new obstacles and enemies will make the course more challenging.
The very short production time of this DLC was a challenge for us, but it was pretty fun and interesting to do something quite different from what we did for years on Dishonored.
More info about Train Runner challenge from a community wiki: https://dishonored.fandom.com/wiki/Train_Runner
A player discovering it for the first time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J-3Y4mXYts
More info about Oil Drop challenge from a community wiki: https://dishonored.fandom.com/wiki/Oil_Drop
And a player testing the challenge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi084_v_zqE
Screenshots
