Chaotic Cavern

  • Role: Level Designer

  • Type of Project: Personal Solo

  • Duration: January 2025 - April 2025

  • Software: UEFN, Fortnite Creative

Overview

  • Designed a POI to seamlessly integrate with past Fortnite maps while providing a new and enriching player experience.

  • Applied single-player guidance principles, architectural design, and competitive multiplayer space design to create a visually appealing, balanced, and easily navigable location.

  • Expanded design skills by crafting a large-scale POI with multiple interconnected locations.

  • Made a significant design pivot to strengthen player experience and reinforce the POI’s thematic identity.

  • Designed traversal options to address the challenges of a large POI and maintain satisfying player movement.

  • Used ambient storytelling through prop placement, landmarks, buildings, and lighting to enhance immersion.

Pre-Production

Planning & Research

  • Researched Fortnite POIs to inspire me and align Chaotic Cavern with Fortnite’s level design philosophy. POIs including:

    • Retail Row

    • Slappy Shores

    • Shifty Shafts

    • The Grotto

  • Studied lane structures to inform my own layout design.

  • Developed a top-down layout based on research findings.

  • Gathered feedback from peers and professors before moving forward.

Interior of an ice cave with a helicopter flying overhead, sunlight streaming in through an opening, and a building with large windows and a pool of water in the foreground.

©Fortnite. (2020) . Epic Games

Project Pitch & Planning Documents

POI Design & Player Traversal

A top-down map of a park with a river running through. The map shows pathways, trees, rocks, and various structures including buildings, bridges, and a waterfall. The key indicates areas with high and low loot/ mats based on color density.

  • Balanced loot distribution by concentrating high-tier loot in the central cavern, making it a high-risk, high-reward hot drop, while decreasing rarity and density in outer areas.

  • Designed three primary areas (Retail, Cavern, Radio Station) to support a 20-player lobby, ensuring dynamic combat and looting opportunities.

  • Developed a central hub interconnected by cave systems and zip lines for fluid movement.

  • Crafted locations using the modular kit that accommodate and reward different play styles.

Environmental Storytelling

  • Used loot placement and props to draw players into the location’s narrative.

  • Utilized buildings to inform players about the POI's origins and the cavern's mystery.

    • Revealed ancient tunnel systems leading to the heart of the cavern.

    • Abandoned mining company restricted area.

  • Presented visual narrative hooks, like those shown in the images, to draw players to the heart of the cavern.

  • To reward/encourage further exploration, hidden loot caches and higher-tier loot are bread crumbed to the center.

POI Pivot & Refinement

  • Problems:

    • The initial POI design lacked uniqueness and depth.

    • The central pit was not visible from a distance, reducing its impact.

    • Traversal to the cavern/pit felt uninteresting.

    • The lack of verticality made the POI visually and gameplay-wise unappealing.

Original POI

Top view of a construction site with buildings, roads, a crane, and a large excavated hole, with some houses and green fields in the background.
Top view of a colorful video game landscape with a mountain, buildings, trees, roads, a river, a bridge, and open grassy areas.

Early Version Of Current POI

  • Solutions:

    • Transformed the pit into a hollowed-out mountain for greater visibility from the Battle Bus and ground level.

    • Created distinct terraces (retail/suburbs, mining, cavern, radio station) to make the POI approachable from all sides.

    • Added tunnels, zip lines, and porta-potty teleports for fluid traversal to support the verticality of the new POI design.

    • Designed the cavern area as a parkour-friendly space to encourage movement-based gameplay.

Ending Notes

I found that, with this project, playing it safe doesn’t foster creativity and makes levels lack identity. Throughout the process of building this space, I realized I was trying to do what I thought was safe and would be ‘guaranteed’ to work. I wanted to design a POI where I could lean more into research on previously built spaces, since the POI had previously closely followed the layout of Retail Row.

With that realization, I realized my driving force was not wanting to mess up the feeling of a POI. It then pushed me to think of ideas with a stronger identity that could set themselves apart from previous POIs and be recognizable. Though it was my first time building a custom Fortnite POI, I knew that if I wanted to make something that would stand out, I needed to trust my intuition, do my research, and create something truly distinctive.

Check out my other projects!

Apotheosis
Fusion