Blog 1: Level Design and Mechanics
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After choosing the concept, Umibozu, we first decided to stick to most of the concept in terms of mechanics and level layout, but when trying it out in the game and seeing how it felt, I knew that there were some changes that needed to be made. At first the idea was that the player, a fisherman in a boat, was to travel through an endless scroller level until they encountered a boss, which they then had to run from. When seeing this in the game it was too dull, and that there had to be some changes made both to the level and mechanics. First we created a basic visual representation of how the game would look like and then decide what needs to be changed after that. After seeing how the game would look like in general, I could see what was missing in the game. The problem was that the player had no feeling of progression with the addition of the very basic mechanics the game had so a few thing needed to be either added or changed. At first I suggested we add more levels to the game, instead of having it as an endless scroller, and these three levels would contain different feelings and location. It would give the player the feeling that they are progressing out into deeper areas and territories given the scenario of the game.
In this example the player starts off in a harbor and then ventures out into the sea, the first stage, giving the player the feeling that they have set off on a journey, giving the level a better feeling. After finishing the level design I only had to fix the mechanics and that was still a problem since we wanted to stick to the concept as much as possible and they were no in-depth mechanics, only simple shooting mechanics, movement, power ups and using the spotlight to the players advantage. Since I could not figure out any way to create a better feeling through creating new mechanics I decided we could remake or change some of the current mechanics, such as the power ups. We ended up deciding on adding a new power up that gives the player a cool-down on the shooting mechanic. Now with this added we have given the game and player a better feeling and also given the mechanic a larger impact that the player can use to his advantage. What I learnt from this was that not always do things need to be added to change the game, things can be changed or updated to fit the changes made to the game.  |
