I spent way too much time designing the layout for Warden Cliffs. Iteration after iteration I would tell myself "this is the design". I'd block it out in 3d, play-test it, and I'd hate it. It felt too much like any town USA.

So I did lots of research. I studied towns and cities in Google Earth. I read books on urban planning at the turn of the century. I studied ancient walled cities and even resorted to using a procedural city generator to see what it might give me. I tried dozens of designs from standard, American grid layouts to organic amoeba-like designs and nothing felt right. 

It wasn't until after I decided to make a list of everything I wanted the player to experience and feel that I decided on a theme park layout much like Disney Land / World. People like walking through theme parks, getting from end-to-end doesn't feel like a chore because the areas feel fresh and transition nicely between themes. There are points of interest and unique areas to explore and every time you go there you find something new. This is exactly how I want the player to experience. 

I'll share a few iterations that I went through while designing the town starting with the sketched layouts.

The block-out and eventual play-through on both PC and in VR felt really good. It checked all of the boxes. But the town still needed to feel like it could exist in the real world; it still felt too much like a theme park. I made a list of vignettes that I wanted the player to experience from the era and made sure to marry the hub-and-spoke layout with some traditional staples of the time like a main street with shops, a town square with town hall, a neighborhood street, row houses and farm land. 

I won't go into too much more detail on why I made decisions or specific points of interest because I want to leave something for you to explore. Hopefully this illustrates at least some of the process I went through while trying to nail down the most important character of the game, the town.