Frutiger Metro in a lot of ways is the polar opposite of Frutiger Aero. It's much more passionate and bold, with sharp-edged shapes, black silhouettes, and highly saturated oranges and purples. In Full Court Uprising, our main character Xiara doesn't exactly fit into the world around her, and we wanted players to feel that by making her art style contrast with the environment's art style.

Combining high speed rail traversal and complex combat introduced unique challenges for level design. We wanted our level to feel open and free for the player to explore in the way they like, but still oriented around an end goal. We also wanted to ensure players were having the best experience and interacting with mechanics at their own pace. Rewards for clever skill expression came in the form of quicker fights, cooler paths, and flashy visual effects as the main character, Xiara, leaps from rail to rail.

One of our big aspirations was to program and position enemies in ways that encouraged you to take advantage of the mechanics in the game. In many encounters throughout the level, players need to use rails liberally to reposition themselves around hordes of enemies.

Another goal of ours was to convey narrative through level design. Full Court Uprising shares a story about overcoming injustices that parallel in our real world, and to convey this within the level, we needed to mix gameplay with thoughtful environmental storytelling that evokes the feelings our story inspires.