Devlog 7: Restaurant Building/Level Design (Nafsi na Ladha ) and Environmental Design

April 05, 2025

Devlog 7: Restaurant Building/Level Design (Nafsi na Ladha ) and Environmental Design

Designing Nasfi na Ladha

Lost in Zania is set in a fictionalised Tanzania in a large luxury restaurant called Nafsi na Ladha (meaning Soul and Taste), steeped in the rich history of the Zuwena family. The restaurant, perched on the coast atop a hill, offers a stunning view of the sea and the city. Players will experience the game during a hot, beautiful summer evening, heading into the speed of the night.

Nafsi na Ladha Building textured progression:

Designing the restaurant required a lot of thought and time. I wanted to achieve my vision of what I had in mind for the restaurant: luxurious, large, detailed, unique, and having a sense of beauty, with its own identity. I wanted players to feel excited upon entering it. Early on, I spent many hours looking at images of restaurants within Africa in general, to the type of architecture they had or what the inside looked like, at items like chairs, tables, lights, decorations, and statues, among other things, to get a sense of what I should be aiming for. I also looked at the luxurious or fancy restaurants in Europe and the design and assets within the building. I wanted to create something that would make the players react with awe as a statement piece, and I wanted the restaurant building to have beautiful views outside the city or the sea, because I had created a background story for the restaurant as a famous place, where celebrities from all over the world come, where glamorous parities are held.

I sketched the main dining hall room with this statement, initially I was going to go with a giant animated statue, but it was not working. It wasn't until I saw a clip of LA Noire where the main character was trapped on the chandelier that I immediately went for creating a giant chandelier in the middle of this main dining hall room. The chandelier, I believed, would serve as a focal point, a symbol of luxury and grandeur, and a source of awe for the players. I had completed it, and it looked visually amazing, but that feeling of amazement quickly dissipated. I wanted this chandelier to have a long-lasting impact regarding the amazement factor. I had redesigned it multiple times; I came up with the idea of crystal rings surrounding the chandelier.

For the rest of the restaurant building, I wanted to design the layout to ensure that it was easy to navigate and identify, with each room having distinct themes and colours. This involved careful planning and consideration of the player's movement. I created a layout that allowed for quick turns and multiple escape routes, ensuring that when the security guard was chasing the player, it would be easy for the player to turn around and run in different directions.

Once I had completed the full restaurant's layout, I had to figure out how the mission was going to be set and where to place the hints left behind by the thieves. This involved creating narratives within rooms that would guide the player's actions and strategically placing the hints in areas that would be challenging and rewarding for the player to discover.

When it came to texturing the building, it was a long and time-consuming process, and I made a mistake that will never be made again regarding the unwrapping and texturing of the building. At first, I unwrapped the entire building, thinking it was already scaled with the characters size. I wrongfully unwrapped the building visually, which seemed fine at a glance; however, when I exported the building to Unity, applied the texture, and tested the scene, it immediately looked off because the textures were way too big. I had to find a solution to this problem quickly; I soon realised it would be a long process. I split each room into its own object/s (because the entire building was jointed) and applied all transforms to ensure it was properly scaled. I had applied seams to unwrap and texture over 75 objects from inside walls, outside, ceilings, ground, and platforms, which was non-stop work for about one and a half weeks.

YouTube link for the white box walkthrough showcasing both inside and outside the restaurant