Bold, distressed text reading 'GRAVEYARD SHIFT' in a vintage style.

Graveyard Shift is a haunted racing level that challenges players with multiple paths and spooky surprises. Racers begin by tearing through a giant spider’s web before entering a creaky mansion and climbing its curved grand staircase. After escaping into a moonlit graveyard, players race uphill past tombstones and ghostly obstacles.

An optional shortcut through the glowing mouth of a ghost offers a risky but rewarding time save. With its eerie atmosphere and layered path design, Graveyard Shift blends horror and speed in a race for the fastest lap.

Engine: Unity

Game Type: Arcade Racer

Personal Project

One-person development team

Roles and Responsibilities

  • Designed racetrack layout using modular 50-meter segments to control pacing and readability

  • Structured layout around fast vehicle movement, ensuring each curve, hill, and straightaway worked with the car’s handling

  • Developed three distinct traversal routes:

    • Main Path through the haunted house and the curved staircase

    • Alternate Path with tighter corners and riskier interior mansion sections

    • Shortcut through a ghost’s mouth, offering time saved for skilled players

  • Integrated narrative elements like spider web tunnels, creaking staircases, and tomb-filled graveyards

  • Created a Level Design Document (LDD) outlining flow, path structure, and gameplay intent

    • Included player and object metrics, reference materials, and feature planning to guide the greyboxing and polishing stages

Flowchart of a game with start/finish line, easy turn beat, haunted house gameplay beats, hard obstacle beat, and different paths through locations like spider forest, graveyard, haunted house, and ghost road.

Bubble Diagram of Paths in Graveyard Shift

Level Design Process

Pre-Production & Planning

  • Created a Level Design Document (LDD) to define goals, flow, and mechanics

  • Collected visual and gameplay references to establish tone and key landmarks

  • Built a bubble diagram to map out major areas and path structure (main, alternate, shortcut)​TristanHafkenscheid_exe…

Greyboxing & Track Structuring

  • Designed the track in 50-meter segments to align with fast-paced car movement

  • Ensured each section supported natural turning, hills, and flow pacing

  • Initial staircase route was too linear with minimal engagement or variation

Alternate Path Rebuild

  • Redesigned the staircase into a curved structure for better flow and presence

  • Added an alternate route underneath the stairs, through a winding, rocky basement

  • Created tighter corners and route contrast for more technical challenge

Shortcut Redesign

  • Original shortcut involved a “thread the needle” jump—too punishing and unreliable

  • Replaced with a raised bridge leading into a ghost’s mouth, improving clarity and risk-reward balance

  • Preserved spooky visual theme while improving gameplay functionality

Iteration & Playtesting

  • Conducted multiple playtests to evaluate path balance and traversal flow

  • Tuned slope angles, turn widths, and timing based on feedback

  • Final layout delivers three distinct path experiences with speed, skill, and strategy in mind

Virtual simulation of a small red car on a road with yellow lane markings, with a digital display showing lap times and counts in the background.

Main path up the stair case

Pixelated digital image of a small pink toy car on a simulated road with yellow lane markings, set in a stylized, blocky environment resembling a cityscape.

Alternate path in basement of mansion

A virtual racing game featuring a small red car on a winding road with city-like buildings in the background, displaying lap times on the screen.

Shortcut in ghosts mouth/road

A hand-drawn diagram of a circular structure with pathways marked in green, blue, and yellow indicating directions toward the top floor, ghost bridge, and basement, respectively. The diagram includes a legend with color codes for main path (green), alternate path (blue), and shortcut (yellow). Inside the structure, there is a figure with a staff standing near a door, and circles on the floor.

Parti Diagram of Paths in Haunted House Beat

Virtual tunnel with a road leading to a bright, open sky, featuring a speaker at the end of the pathway.

Initial blockout version of staircase in mansion. Felt flat and not like a house.

A digital rendering of a surreal interior space featuring a road that curves inside a room with walls, a ceiling, and an elevated platform with glowing orange blocks, and a ghost-like face in the background.

Refined greybox – curved staircase main path with a alternate path on the first floor.

Problem Solving

Development for Graveyard Shift began with a detailed Level Design Document and bubble diagram to map out major landmarks and player flow. The initial greybox used 50-meter modular segments to align track pacing with the car’s fast handling and maintain smooth transitions through turns and hills.

The original staircase was designed as a linear incline, but playtests revealed it lacked challenge and variety. To fix this, I redesigned it into a curved structure, which not only improved the visual layout but allowed for better gameplay flow. This also created space beneath the staircase for a new alternate path—a winding, rocky basement route with tighter corners that offered a more technical challenge.

The shortcut originally required players to precisely jump through a small hole in a wall— a “needle-threading” mechanic that proved too punishing. Worse, it matched the main path’s timing, making it ineffective as a shortcut. I reworked it into a raised bridge that led directly into a ghost’s mouth, improving visual clarity and execution. The shortcut’s entrance was repositioned and iterated on multiple times to ensure it was faster than the main path while still demanding skill to use effectively.

Map of a racetrack with a wooded area and a brown area in the middle, featuring some green sections and a small water feature.
A cartoon-style illustration of a maze with a purple spider at the start, a green ant at the end, and a winding road surrounding a house-like structure with a bridge and some green patches.
A digital illustration of a winding race track with various terrains, including green grass, brown dirt, and dark rocky areas, illuminated by streetlights. The track features sharp turns, a tunnel, and a large spider sitting on the track near the bottom left.