Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss | DLC: The Shining Trapezoedron

These screenshots come from several scenes across the DLC tied to the Shining Trapezohedron mini-quest. These are hidden levels the player can explore to collect all the shards of this artifact from H.P. Lovecraft's short story "The Haunter of the Dark." The Shining Trapezohedron serves as a window on all of space and time — by gazing into it, its wielder would summon the Haunter of the Dark, an avatar of Nyarlathotep.
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I mainly worked on level art for these levels. The main challenge was populating seven levels with a still-shifting design, late in production, with limited resources to characterize the place and little time to do it. These levels lean heavily on gameplay, which left little room for visual variety — each mini-biome needs to be instantly recognizable so the player can orient themselves within this non-Euclidean space. The edges of the map teleport you back into the continuity of these biomes, elsewhere on the map, so I didn't have much room to maneuver. The place is also very dimly lit, which is a gameplay requirement in itself: the Haunter can hunt you in the dark, and you have no access to your flashlight. The goal is to reach the box containing the Shining Trapezohedron shard — visible in the red beam of light — alive, in order to complete the mini-quest. These levels rely heavily on reused assets from elsewhere in the game, sometimes reassembled or recolored.
For example, the flesh is a blend of recolored entrocyte matter found in the basement of the first quest, with various marine vegetation assets, like algae.
The whitish area is a mix of recolored fungus-like ground created by Christian Leduc — found in the Yith Citadel — combined with dead coral and basalt rocks.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/6L9GkN
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There are four biomes in total: a flesh-and-vegetation biome, a wood-and-yellowed-paper biome, a bone biome, and a whitish fungus-and-coral biome.

The biome with the yellowed paper and ash-grey ground is a subtle nod to the original short story, which follows Robert Blake, a writer who discovers the Shining Trapezohedron and deciphers texts about it left behind by ancient evil cults. The story ends in tragedy, in a church in Providence, Rhode Island, destroyed by fire.
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To save time, I built asset assemblies as Blueprint actors, allowing me to quickly place sets of props across the different biomes. I also used the foliage tool to place little assets on the ground.
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On this level, I mainly worked with Nicolas Nimias, on Quest/Level Design.
Hugo Lefebvre (FX Artist) helped a lot with visual effects and moving stuff.
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𝗔𝗥𝗧/𝗖𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗩𝗘 𝗗𝗜𝗥𝗘𝗖𝗧𝗢𝗥
https://www.artstation.com/artom
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𝗟𝗘𝗔𝗗 𝗘𝗡𝗩𝗜𝗥𝗢𝗡𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧 𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗦𝗧
https://www.artstation.com/zyke15
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𝗘𝗡𝗩𝗜𝗥𝗢𝗡𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧 𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗦𝗧𝗦
https://www.artstation.com/the-cubic-cat
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𝗙𝗫 𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗦𝗧
Hugo Lefebvre
https://hugolefebvrehl.wixsite.com/vfx-portfolio
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See full credits list: https://www.mobygames.com/game/259403/cthulhu-the-cosmic-abyss/credits/windows/
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