Vicen Pascual
🎮Producer | Designer | QA 🎮
Help Vivi find their home through the deep and vast magical forest!
This game is a simple prototype I created with ready-made textures to explain the level design process in a simple side scroller without using enemies using only a maximum of two mechanics. I will explain the process I followed to create this project.
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The first thing we do is to justify the art design through the narrative: Vivi is a little wizard lost on his way home in a magical forest. Everything is big in front of him, hence the choice of an art style of greenish and muted colours.
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As a game designer, your role guides the player through four fast, relaxing, surprising levels. Because of that, it was interesting that the player felt challenged by the art and, at the same time, that he would consider it not hopeless to try it again. That's why the decoration I did was precisely to combine greenish colours and play with different lighting.
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As there are no enemies, it will be necessary to focus on placing obstacles. I have placed an eye-catching point of light to draw attention to these obstacles so that they do not go unnoticed by the player. Additionally, breadcrumbs guide the player. At the end of each level, there is a star symbolising the passage to the following stage.
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The first level is mainly for the player to assimilate both the obstacles and the mechanics of the game, and little by little, he will go deeper into these two mechanics, as you will see below. Before touching the engine, I used a graphic design program to measure the terrain's position. Once I had the first sketch, I materialised it in the engine and iterated constantly; I managed to give it the right way.
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This first image is the first level in a very simplified way.
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Later, in the second stage, I added the possibility for some bushes to have their mobility with the difficulty of placing hazards in them to increase difficulty. There is no challenge without difficulty.
In the third phase, I wanted to make a small change to the background so that it wouldn't be the same perspective all the time, so taking into account that the player's house or target is deep in the forest, I placed an earth background simulating entering a deep cave. I took advantage of the fact that a background that was too dark might cause problems with the player's location by placing several spotlights at key points in the scene.
In terms of difficulty, I presented a new threat to the player. If we look at games like Super Mario, when the player domain the key mechanics, found a new kind of hazard. This threat is found when we enter the first castle in the first world: a river of lava. This resource, in the right way, works well enough to give the player a slight sense of stress without breaking their immersion in the game.
From this, I did something similar: the player walked on a river of water poisoned with particles that could harm the player. With that, I made it so the player cannot stand still thinking about his actions for too long. He has to be forced to think and act at the same time, maybe it poses too much risk to the player, and it's not convenient to prolong that feel too much, so I narrowed the level down quite a bit.
That's how it ended:
I used the vertical coin placement to guide the player towards a target out of the player's field of vision. In this way, there was no need to scale the camera outwards, and the player's vision remained at the same point in the game.
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Finally, we reach the final stage: a real spectacle of lights and obstacles in which we employ kishotenketsu to test the player on everything he has assimilated. Still, the story doesn't end here as a new danger appears: blue balls that rotate on the same axis, generating an arc.
Sounds like fun, doesn't it?
Let's take a look at the design of level 4:
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Evolution of process
Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Level 4
...but is the prototype finished?
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In design, everything is questionable,e and, as Taylor Swift says, never say neve. At that supposed end of the process, many doubts arise. Solution? Constantly test the mechanics until you get the feedback you want to convey to your specific target. From my experience, it is not easy to achieve, but every step forward is a challenge to overcome, and at least one person is satisfied: you for your work as a designer.
HERE YOU CAN PLAY IT
(YOU NEED A WINDOWS OPERATIVE SYSTEM AND DECOMPRESS THE FILE )