Level Concept

For level two I thought about making a simple yet challenging design, which would require the player to understand the movement system. I took inspiration from Mario a little bit, which can be seen in the straightforward jumps and the pyramid jump as well. Instead of having the camera in a static position at some points as it was in level one, I decided to have to constantly focus on the player. This is because I believe it suits the level better, and lets the player discover little secrets in the level without overbearing help.

White Boxing

When I was white boxing this level, I decided to make spikes the main danger, along with a couple of enemies to add to the difficulty. I liked Luke’s idea of moving platforms so I decided to add a moving platform at a segment of level, as I felt that just completing jumps would be very monotone and get boring too quickly. I just added one of these platforms as the level itself is meant to be quite short.

Playtesting

When we had our play test for the game, we were told that the movement system was very unlike a platformer, since the character had too long of an acceleration time, as well as a deceleration time. An issue of the player sticking to walls was also brought up, which previously went unnoticed by us. I decided to completely redo the player movement system and I believe it is more up to par for a platforming game. Some of the feedback we received was to add checkpoints to the game, and I didn’t think this would merge well with the timer, so I scrapped the timer and replaced it with a regular old HP and checkpoint system.

Iteration

The first iteration of the game involved a continuous timer throughout the game, and the old movement system. Through hearing feedback from the playtest these were changed, and we also decided to add a scoring system. In this system the player would collect items to increase their score. We thought that this would make the game more interesting for the player instead of just jumping from one block to another, however we haven’t had a chance to see how players react to it since it was added after the playtest.

Final Evaluation

Personally, I feel like more could have been added to the game, for example a boss fight at the end of each level to progress to the next, however I am pleased with the overall feel of the game and how it plays. If I could go back and change anything it would be the movement system which I created. I feel that it is lacking in something, however my current knowledge of unity scripting is not of a high enough standard to make any major improvements at this time and I also wanted to keep from using too many tutorials, as then it wouldn’t feel like I’ve learned anything and I would feel like I didn’t create enough by myself.