Derelict Machine

My submission to (and winner of) the Lorn's Lure Workshop Release Competition. Set in a ruinous cavern—what once was a city—the player must explore the destruction, coming face to face with a massive machine, and scaling its insides to find it just as dead as the city it ravaged.

Lorn's Lure is an indie First-person platform made by Rubeki, and the Workshopping Competition was held for 2 months as a celebration of Workshop support being added. I, however, developed this map within the span of a week during Spring Break, utilizing a mix of pre-existing prefabs and simple pro-builder assets.

It was a massive test of endurance, pushing forward my skills in rapid iteration, clever asset reuse, and level design knowledge in a severe time crunch. I'm happy to say it paid off!

The map can be downloaded here from the Steam Workshop.

Personal Playthrough of Derelict Machine showcasing the main pathway.

The introductory reveal to Area 1. A long pipe, and the exit a break within it. The pathway abruptly stops, forcing the player to pause and observe their surroundings and discover their path upward.

Area 1: The Cavern. A twisted mass of exposed pipes and rebar. Clear paths traced from the positive space. Ample and forgiving opportunity to learn climbing, wall-running, and tic-tac strategies which will be used throughout the level.

The transitionary road between Areas 1 and 2: a long, straight trek forward within a ravine. Chunks of roadway and human-oriented objects trickle in, blending the enviornments of A1 and 2. Tiny and in the distance, a red light piercing the fog.

Area 2: The Ruins. A small city destroyed. Streets displaced and buildings toppled over and crumbling. The ground has shattered and flooded with tar. This view is a major reveal at the end of the transitionary straight. Geometry angled to let the player slide allows a relaxing, no-input story beat to take in the implication of the scene.

A view between ruins, showcasing the foreboding silhouette of the Machine emerging from the fog. As the player goes through Area 2, they venture closer to the Machine, building anticipation for when they inevitably traverse its insides. Fog in this level was purposely set to obscure and reveal more details as the level progresses.

A secondary view of the machine in the distance within Area 2. This view is from the shipping yard, which holds an optional collectible diamond atop a building radar dish. This side profile view showcases the Machines various tubes which run from its back into the rock faces surrounding the city.

A framed view of a parkour section within City ruins. Wallrunning and tic-tac strategies may be used to traverse within the gutted skeletons of this dead world. Rebar and exposed concrete highlight traversal opportunities and provide a navigational challenge for the player to improvise solutions to.

The leadup to the Machine. A cinch in the level layout provides only one pathway toward the Machine proper: a low-hanging tube crashing into a protruding rock face. Players run along this tube to get close enough to jump into an exhaust pipe and enter Area 3. Skilled players may also find emergent paths around the exterior.

The threshold into Area 3: The Machine's Interior. Through the exhaust pipe, the high-density geometry revealed through the end of the exhaust pipe naturally draws the player's eyes upward. Two red lights pierce the fog, marking the player's ultimate goal. View from below outlines the major traversal beats within the new area.

Horizontal pipes and axels bridge either side of the interior, creating a zig-zag navigational flow as the player continues to traverse upward. Pistons set-piece provide a challenge that combine navigational tools (tic-tac and climbing) which the player has been trained to use throughout the level.

The final challenge: skirting the upper pistons. Utilizing the hanging grebles, the player must make a leap of faith and utilize the climbing hooks to shimmy along to the piston; then, a wall jump off the piston onto the next greeble allows the player to land safely onto the last piston. Prescice stamina management or navigational ingenuity is required to surpass this challenge.

Editor Views + Walkthrough

Because of my time crunch, I trimmed down a lot of my typical workflow practices, instead designing the map section-by-section through a series of vertical slice parkour segments. It looked something like this:

Create an obstacle using prefabs and preobuilder assests
Ensure accurate metrics utilizing player guage + "ruler" prefab (compare to written metrics from Day 1 playground)
Play through obstacle.
Iterate. Repeat.

I did this for nearly every section of the map, which made it have a unique flow that let each obstacle have a natural flow between one another as I would measure my own fatigue and the exact timing between beats as I worked through the map from the bottom-up.

I used this map to focus on only two mechanics: the Tic-Tac and the Wall Climb as they were the most "parkour" mechanics that would lend themselves to interesting navigational puzzles. Other mechanics, like the grappling hook and dash, I found often allowed the player to completely circumvent what I dub the "navigational puzzle" aspect of Lorn's Lure. I wanted to challenge the player and reward them for skillful use of a more grounded moveset.

Reception + Interation

I am very proud to say that Derelict Machine was selected as winner of the Lorn's Lure Workshop competition! Community reception was overall extremely positive. At the time of writing (3/29/2026) the workshop item has amassed 98% positive ratings and 7 user-given awards.

Comments levied to me individually and on the Steam Workshop page focus on my experiments with the Tic-Tac mechanic and deep exploration of its uses through wall-running + jumping. Many also praised my use of environmental storytelling and atmosphere, comparing it the official Chapter 6 in Lorn's Lure. Even the developer highlights my use of tension and release and experimental platforming throughout the level.

My favorite comment claims I "...really [nail] that feeling of navigating a space that isn't in any way made for traversing." I find this comment endearing because the level was explicitly made to be traversed! But the atmosphere and trained use of the Tic-Tac sells the idea that the player is making their own path through the environment.

Rubeki's (Developer of Lorn's Lure) Reaction Video to Contest Submissions.

Derelict Machine playthrough and review @ 26:49

MVP Playtester "Arasu" on Discord. Even walked through his speedruns with me through a call + streaming the game.

My inital build was submitted the night of the contest; however, my only playtester at the time was myself... which obviously lead to me missing a few key issues.

Luckily, one Discord user was very quick to point them out to me via DMs. In the day following release, I worked with him online, combing through the issues he had found and publishing them in a "Day 1 patch".

Importantly, I learned that this user broke the boundaries of my map by traversing around the exterior of the machine. Somehow, using their parkour skills and extreme stamina management, they were able to get atop the machine and trigger the ending by running along the top of the exit pipe.

I was amazed at this. Instead of punishing players for "breaking the map" with invisible walls, I instead insert cracks at the top of the exit pipe that the player could fall into. I believe players should be rewarded for their skill and ingenuity for traversing the map.

Nice Reviews on Steam!

Included in my Day 1 patch was a complete rework of the Machine's interior. Due to time constraints before contest deadline, I was forced to rush the parkour elements of the machine proper. This resulted in a very lackluster and empty-feeling machine interior that overall killed the expectation built throughout Area 2.

Though the piston navigation had been implemented, there was a axel-thing running from end-to-end that the player could run along and completely ignore the challenge completely. Normally, I would reward shortcuts, but the answer was too obvious, undermined the design goals of Area 3, and felt more like a chore than a challenge to traverse.

In my second interation, I went back and redid most of the interior. I changed Piston positions, lowered the long axel piece so that it served as a broken bridge across the bottom oil pool, and added several more platforming sections utilizing pipes and hanging greeblies.

In addition, I added a new optional traversal challenge to obtain a crystal! Overall, the new iteration made the interior of the machine not only more visually interesting and claustrophobic, but also made the final Area more fun to navigate and prevented many "cheesy" ways of avoiding obstacles.

All new Crystal challenge!

Entrance Reveal Comparison

Interior Side Overview Comparison

Pre-Production and Community Engagement

Unfortunately due to the severe time crunch, my allocated time for Pre-production planning was limited. Where I usually design a 2D layout map to build off from in-editor, I instead used the first few days of my sprint learning the toolkit provided in the workshop pack, nailing metrics and provided scripts in a test map before diving right into the Block-Out Stage.

Once I got a feel for the game and learned what was really "fun" in my playground, I made a moodboard that chronicled my inspirations for the level design.

Conversating with Rubeki (Developer) on script functionality and potential usage.

Logging progress-halting bug.

Relaying tool useage (E to interact + Dialogue UI triggers) to another mapper after learning how to use them.

During my one-week crunch development, I was also very active in the Rubeki Games Discord server. I was constantly giving updates and troubleshooting bugs I ran into with the editor tools.

It was also here that I realized some of my navigational puzzle designs could not be realized since there was no way to upload custom scripts and the provided ones were limited in odd ways. One obstacle I intended to create was impossible to do with the tools provided; however, this limitation lead to me creating a different navigational puzzle for my finale instead!

While I was in the discord, I also did my best to help others troubleshoot and learn the toolset provided with the workshop editor. Inside of my Metrics playground, I also spent time learning all of the different scripts that were, and despite not using all of them, I did my best to aid others in their mapping journeys by coaching them in how best to use them.

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