Zenko: A Fox’s Tale
The Shrine and the Ascent
A whimsical fox must move between realms to capture wandering spirits, discover new abilities, and restore an abandoned shrine.
I am a level designer for Zenko: A Fox’s Tale and a member of 17 developers on this team. The level featured in the first video is mine and at the time of the recording was in whitebox. The second one was our final presentation on release day!
I am responsible for whiteboxing and set dressing the game’s tutorial and hub level, named the Ascent and Shrine, respectively.
Software used: UE4, Maya, and Photoshop
When we began, I began collecting resources for a Misty Japanese Mountain exploration. I wanted to capture that feeling of a lonely, moss strewn alpine forest in northern Japan for the game’s tutorial, aka the Ascent. However, by the time the player has climbed the mountain and reached the abandoned Shinto Shrine, it was practically calling for a Shinto Rock Garden complete with gravel, traditional architecture, and Sakura blossoms in the distance. The Sakura trees growing at the Shrine are protected from the harsh cold by the magic energy of the mountain. Below is the reference board for my level.
The Outline for the Shrine and the Ascent
After I gathered resources I went through many iterations of the outline of the mountain that the player ascends from hand drawn maps, to painterly brushes in photoshop, to the current version, posted below.
very first sketch of the Ascent
Map of what was the terraces
first final map
revisions made after the first final map
Next came whiteboxing
After the first iteration of the whitebox was created, I then decided to start working in engine. I knew from the get-go that I needed to make custom whitebox textures so I made a few for the team to give our team’s whitebox proxies a unique look as well as making several action blocks for our protagonist.
action blocking
one of the ideas from the action block phase
another set of action blocks
first sculpt of the mountain using UE4's landscape editor
first pass at the terraces section
with some more color
first pass whitebox for the terraces with more color
first pass whitebox for the terraces with more color
first pass whitebox for the terraces with more color
first pass whitebox for the terraces with more color and the initial implementation of the realm swap mechanic
Then the Set Dressing and revisiting the Ascent…
By our April 2021 presentation, I had the second pass of the Ascent portion of my level fully whiteboxed and underwent two weeks of playtesting.
Beginning to add in the first walls of the terraces
with everything filled in. notice that the shrine at this stage was a massive pagoda-tower
first pass at rocking the cliffs. Ugly. I know.
spirit world version of the terraces
Adding in what was going to be the shrine caretaker house
I prototyped a bridge spline for the other LDs. I couldn't get the peirs to stop stretchign so I removed them!
another view of the stretching that happened...
starting the new whitebox over...
expanding to a cliff section
adding a forest
adding in a final challenge for the ascent
adding in an elongated beginning
the shrine: third variant!
rocking the cliffs much better this go round...
this can be seen again
filling in the set dressing
created a custom merged actor from the asset packs we were using
new secret bridge in the spirit realm
removing the terraces to expedite the production of the level!
VFX Prototypes
Just because I thought that building a playable level wasn’t enough, I took it upon myself to create several VFX instances. One of which is a secret! Please note that the Shrine was in a very early whitebox at the time of recording.
