Oilrig

The Oilrig was designed to feel labyrinthine, unfamiliar, and uninviting. We wanted to capture the precarity of navigating such an environment, while embracing the chaos this brings to combat, with multiple overlapping sightlines at different ranges.

I was responsible for the blockouts of this map, particularly in its early development, as well as overseeing its iteration into the final shipped version.

The map is divided into three major sections: the superstructure (underside), interior, and exterior. Each section was designed to function as a self-contained Level Layout, with higher-difficulty variants built around player traversal between them.

Each section offers a distinct gameplay feel. The superstructure is precarious, with heavy verticality and overlapping sightlines that require careful team coordination. The interior focuses on tight, claustrophobic corridors, introducing intense close-quarters combat. The exterior is more open and controlled, with clearer sightlines that support a more readable combat experience.

One of the main design challenges with this map is navigation between these sections. While each area is relatively intuitive on its own, players can become disoriented when transitioning between them. The layered and twisting structure makes it difficult to identify clear routes in and out.

If I were to revisit the map’s layout, I would focus on making these transitional spaces into stronger visual anchors: larger, more readable, and more clearly connected to their adjoining sections.

We also ran into issues with overly cluttered sightlines, particularly in the superstructure. Players would sometimes struggle to understand where they were being shot from, or be hit from unexpected angles. While this contributes to a sense of unpredictability and danger, it occasionally crosses into frustration.

I think the Oilrig works best at a macro level. Progressing from the Moonpool, through the Container Maze, and up to extraction at the Bridge / Helipad creates a strong sense of forward momentum and escalation.

This map also makes abundant use of verticality, more so than any other Rogue Point level. To keep this readable for players, we constrained each major area to just two layers: upper and lower. This means that players are typically only threatened from above or below, rather than multiple stacked levels at once. This is one of the level’s quiet but effective design constraints.