The WereCleaner
The WereCleaner
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About the Project
About the Project
The WereCleaner is a 3D stealth, cleaning sim about a werewolf janitor trying to pay his rent while avoiding killing any employees at the company he works for.
Made in Unity engine.
Won Best Student Project at the 16th Unity Awards and Audience Choice at IGF 2025.
My Contributions
My Contributions
Currently with a team size of 25 people, The WereCleaner started development in Summer 2023, and released in Spring 2024. I joined the project in May 2023 as a level designer and level artist.
Some of my duties include:
designing a level layout of the entire game's map that supports the game's objectives and the creative director’s vision
iterated on and balanced the level layout based on feedback from the design lead and other disciplines as well as playtests
conceptualized and set-dressed rooms in the level layout in Unity engine to create an immersive and engaging play space
Other contributions include: collaborating with the design team in order to brainstorm the tools the player would use, and helping write the game design document.
Level Design: Thought Process
Level Design: Thought Process
My design process for creating the level layout for the game is to think about the relationships between each room and interesting ways to get between them. The player should have trade offs for different options of getting places so there isn't one objective best way to get from point A to point B. This allows for the player to make meaningful choices, which I believe is a necessary aspect of games.
I added lots of passageways in between different rooms so that there would be multiple entrances and exits to various rooms throughout the level. For getting from the upper side to the lower side, I focused on having two different paths on the left and right of the map in order to demonstrate "different but equal" choices.
The straight, long hallway on the left would be the quickest yet the most dangerous way to traverse from the upper side to the lower side because if the player runs into an NPC, they have to kill them, distract them, or run and hide if they wish to avoid killing them. The path on the right side focuses more on slow but safe, with more rooms and thus corners and walls to hide behind or to distract NPCs behind.
Initial Level Layout Concept
Initial Level Layout in Engine (Unity)
After a week or so of the playtesting and development with the initial level design layout, my design lead came to me with some feedback on how to improve the level layout to suit our game's needs.
We discussed making the level smaller considering the smaller scope of our game as well as polishing up some of the sections to make sure that there would be no empty space in between the hallways and rooms, as it might cause confusion for the player.
The two different paths between the upper and lower sides changed to be kinder to the player. When the player first loads into a level through the elevator, I wanted the player to enter a safe space, which I created by adding a janitor-only janitor's closet directly to one side.
There is another longer, more dangerous passage reminiscent of the original left side hallway path from the 1st iteration of the level layout that leads from the lobby right into the middle of the upper side.
I re-designed the original right side safer path to be more of a maze of interconnected rooms, losing the hallways completely. It forces the player to go through a potentially dangerous, NPC-filled area of rooms to get to the right side of the upper and lower side or to take a detour through the safest path all the way on the left side of the level layout.
First Iteration of Level Layout
Iteration is the name of the game, and thus equipped with more playtest feedback and notes from my design lead, I returned to the drawing board.
A common complaint was that the level was too big, especially for the smaller scope of the game that the director was going for. Taking this information, I worked to make the whole level smaller while still keeping each unique and distinct area.
Second Iteration Revision of Level Layout
Current Iteration of Level Layout
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