Ambient Pressure – Level 1(prototype tutorial)
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My role in my group is part Lead Designer, part Level Designer. As Level Designer, I’ve had a hard time figuring out the proper way to do my job. Realizing the best way to teach the player is a big undertaking and forces me to take many things in account, many of which is beyond my current abilities. It is still a process undergoing and what is shown in this blog post will most likely not be in the final product.
When designing the first level, I focused entirely on teaching the player the fundamentals of the game, show the core loop. With the whole game centered around 1) Finding samples and 2) Escaping enemies, these were the two features I wanted to focus on entirely. Ideally these would be presented to the player before being forced as an obstacle, but with the limited resources we have there is no clear way to properly hold the player’s hand throughout the whole thing. This can lead to a trial and error situation, but as of yet it cannot be tested, as it has not been implemented yet.
Following Dan Taylor’s Ten Principles of Good Level Design, I came up with the following map:
Click image to enlarge Legend for the map:
The first room in the game is designed to allow the player some space to move around in and get accustomed to the controls. Here they learn the way to move, and their first act will be to explore – which is immediately rewarded by a Sample. There will be a faint growl heard here, coming from the enemy on the other side of the door. When ready, the player moves through said door and is met with the first enemy in the game. This enemy, approaching the player, will force the the player to perform some kind of action. Either they run, or – more probably – they will attempt to shoot it. Shooting will teach the player that the fish cannot be defeated, only temporarily stalled. And so the player will eventually be forced to move on through the next door. The next room, the big square, is empty in order to give the player time to breathe out after their previous encounter. They only way forward is up, and once they reach the next corridor, they once again hear the faint growl of a fish. The second Sample in the game is located here, and share position with the game’s first power-up – “Light Up”. This will reveal the whole screen, and will show the enemy on the other side of the wall, foreshadowing an encounter. The player is given time to think about how to handle the situation. The intended action here is that the player will shoot a flare in the upper corridor, luring the fish away from the exit located just to the right of it (not shown in the image above). As a fail safe, should the player not properly understand their intended course of action, a Sample is positioned in the upper corridor, forcing the player to take a closer look at their alternatives.
As previously mentioned, this level is subject to change. It has not been properly tested and is as prototype as can be. It is expected to be very short, played in less than two minutes, but as it stands this is the size of most maps in the game.  |
