Creating a level design with bugged enemies

I recently had the pleasure of making the level design for our game so that we had something proper to show during our alpha presentation, which went good and all if it hadn’t been for one tiny detail, the one and only enemy in the game was killing it self with its own projectile.
Making the level design in of itself was not a hard task per-se but more of a time-consuming, brainstorming and shape making task. Placing obstacles in an interesting fashion drains the imagination a bit, but it is nothing compared to placing enemy NPCs and then testing to see if they provide enough of a challenge to the player, that drains the patience of someone who does not do QA regularly. This is especially true when the enemy in question is bugged and kills it self with its own projectile while trying to murder the player’s character. There is no way imaginable to test if the level design works when the only challenge presented is to see if I can remember the layout perfectly and beat my speedrunning time, which is not the main focus of the test.

The above happened Wednesday, the day before our alpha presentation. My team met up an hour before the lecture was meant to start so that we could fix some last-minute things, including taking a look at the level when the enemies are doing what they are meant to do. The enemies are meant to kill the player but boy where they relentless, there was no way anyone would be able to complete the level when they shot as rapid as they did and in the numbers that they where in, adjustments had to be made and quick.
I lowered the fire rate and the number of enemies that would be on-screen at any given moment but it was still hard, not impossible (I think) but still very hard.

Before I had even started on the level design I had made an agreement to myself to not start on it until the feature freeze because then I would know what was in the game and I would not have to worry about making changes unless the level was unfair. Sadly, the current level only uses the current assets of the game and will have to be updated in the future when the new assets gets added. While I get work to do, which is sadly a rarity, it feels inefficient to work like this although it does provide testing material, so it is not all that bad in the grand scheme of things.

About Daniel Reinsson

2017 Game Design

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