Designing the Level

Hello Everyone!
This week our team Bugbear decided that we should probably have level design for our game Umibozu. Because right now our game have random enemy spawns, and random power-ups spawns. You just float around on an endless sea and meeting the enemies as you ”progress” forward. It works with game we choose, sure, but we thought we could make our game even better if made a level design. It also makes it easier to make in a sense when you have a level design ready, because you will have a certain control of what the play can and should do during the gameplay.

In our version of the game, we have a constant scrolling background, so you always have the sensation that you are moving forward. And if you add a level design to that is very easy, but we still wanted to keep the aesthetic of exploration, which makes a whole lot harder considering all of our aspects. To counter that we came up with the solutions of having the sides of the player loop. So if the play constantly is moving right, they will still end up in the center of the playing field we will build up. So we can still add spawn points for enemies and power-ups and cool locations we don’t want the player to miss without them noticing in a way. If the replay the game several times they will notice, but it will just add to the feeling of being lost at sea.

So i took a piece of paper and started drawing what i thought the game level would look like. While sketching on a level design, I built it with mind of a learning curve. So the player starts of easy, meet our first enemy, shine the floodlight on it and shoot it, so the player realizes that the shadows in the fog are dangerous. If they don’t shoot it they will take damage and learn that the hard way. Then they will meet our first obstacle and a power-up, so the player can learn that all the fog sprites in the shadows might not be dangerous, and that you can’t kill obstacles.
And while making the level design, I divided the level into smaller level, so on each smaller level the player will either learn a new mechanic, or face a bigger challenge form the previous one.

About Simon Ågren

2017 Game Design

View all posts by Simon Ågren →