Surface Tension Uncut

Surface Tension: Uncut is a great point of personal pride for me. Back when Black Mesa was released as a free mod, I was a long-standing Half-Life fan who had been following its development closely. I was disappointed by the cuts made to the Surface Tension chapter, so I decided to put my Level Design skills to the test by recreating those missing sections myself and releasing them. It was my first publicly released level design project, and ended up being very well received by the community. It was also the reason Crowbar Collective decided to hire me. Imagine my joy when it was decided we would integrate my levels into the base game for its upcoming commercial release!

We decided on a ground-up rebuild of my maps to meet the standards of a retail release, which I was more than happy to dive into. I believe these levels were among the weakest in the original chapter, but our adaptation transforms them into some of the strongest. My approach focused on emphasising the chaos of “all-out war” between the Xenians and the HECU: through large, dramatic scripted moments and more subtle environmental storytelling.

This set of maps was a real tour-de-force by all our departments and taught me a lot about working across disciplines. I was involved in every stage of development: from initial blockouts to scripting and gameplay refinement, through to art passes (integrating assets from other teams) and implementing intricate cinematic physics sequences.