About the project
Personal responsibilities
Level Design
Game Design
Details
Project Length - 8 weeks (half time)
Engine - TGA2D, Developed by our project group
Level Editor - Tiled
Reference game - Ori and the Blind Forest
Download at itch.io
The Design Process
Creating a believable world - One of the design challenges I wanted to solve in this project was to create a world that felt believable and organic. The hub level was the first level I designed and sort of set the standard for the rest of the game.
I began by establishing the layout of the level with a pen & paper overview. Placing key locations such as where the player should spawn, level transitions and essential gameplay objects. I also made sure to avoid 90 degree angles and floating platforms as this would enforce that artificial feel I wanted to avoid.
By following these rules I ended up with a level that had that organic feel I wanted to achieve.
Dealing with backtracking - Since we decided to go with a hub-world which the player returns to after each level, we had to solve the issue with backtracking. We solved this by designing our levels in a horseshoe shape making the player naturally return to the entrance.
Iterations
During playtesting I observed that players was not aware of how their abilities worked so we had an internal discussion about the issue and decided to add a tutorial section to the hub level.
I wanted to make sure the player really understood their abilities so I designed a series of puzzles divided into confined “prison cell” areas
We also decided to use a different biome for the tutorial in order to better signify the end of the tutorial while also adding more variety to the level.
