In my Video Game Development class I am the level designer for Space Girl in a group of three. I have never been a level designer before for a group project and I have learned lots about the position since in these past three sprints (six weeks).
So far the process of making a mobile game has been fun. I found the process was less stressful than interesting and fun. I expected building a game to be playful, but not as playful as it's been so far. My team and I have been ignoring lots of what we set out to do, besides basic requirements for the project, and chosen to "follow the fun" in our playtests. I especially get very hands on experience with this because my job is to build levels. Lots of the process is pressing play, tweaking, pressing play, tweaking, pressing play, restarting, and etcetera. The process has changed over time though, as in the beginning of the project I had to help with some basic functionality's of the game, such as UI and small scripted events. After about two weeks though I was finally making obstacles, prefabs for levels, and finally entire levels. This happens simply because level designers, especially for small teams, seems to be unneeded until the game's basic infrastructure is built. This is a great thing to know, as if I ever plan on producing a game I will need to keep this in mind for my team.
I also have learned how close the game designers and level designers should be in this process. While we don't have a dedicated game designer, our producer has filled this role as they have final say for most things. I constantly am taking up issues on the game with him and asking for new features or changes simply because I think the player will have more fun like so. Luckily I have a producer that listens and allows me to express these thoughts as he takes them into consideration and sometimes will ask the programmer to put these changes into effect.
List of all cards assigned to me:
Paper prototype level
Design space debris
Design SpaceTeck
Warning feature
Kessler Cascade (Following kill zone)
Space Debris Prefab
UI Health
UI Abilities
Tutorial Level
First Level
Parts of level requiring mix of abilities
Third type of enemy
It was my job to do most things relating to level design, and if there was something else at the beginning that needed doing then I took some load off the programmer's hands as well. This meant I would make some of the UI elements in early development. Generally though, I worked on all things in the level that didn't relate to the player. So I build the Kessler Cascade, the platforms, fire assets, a tutorial level, and structured the prefabs folder. In the future I will need to make the rest of the levels such as Level 1, 2, and more.
Here are some visual examples of things I contributed to. I often added my own things without being assigned something simply because I felt it was needed. Before pushing these changes I would show my teammates and ask permission from the producer, but all of these changes were appreciated. For example, I helped make some visual elements while building levels because I felt some things needed more communication to the player, including the fire particle effect and the gradient that helps tell the player how close the Kessler Cascade is to them.
List of all completed cards:
Paper prototype level
Design space debris
Design spaceteck
Warning feature
Kessler cascade
Space debris prefab
UI health
UI abilities
Tutorial level
List of all cards in progress:
Tutorial Level (Completed previously, but moved back to in progress to update with changes made to abilities and after receiving feedback from playtest)
First Level
Parts of level requiring mix of abilities
Third type of enemy
Issues/Problems/Solutions Encountered
I had lots of issues with things relating to UI and scripting as I'm not very skilled in this realm, but with some tutorials and research I was able to solve all of my problems. Other issues I had was with communication with teammates. Sometimes teammates would take time when I said there was a problem or get to my problem much later than I asked. While this was frustrating I was able to make it clear to teammates when I was blocked and couldn't move on without them addressing my issue, and they worked with me as much as they could within their schedule. For example lots of system scripts will break under stress as I built larger scale levels. This often requires tweaks and so I reach halts in my work periods when I need a programmer to fix something. I often couldn't do it myself as I didn't understand how their scripts worked or they didn't want me messing around in their scripts.
When it came time to building levels I was blinded by my knowledge of my own game, resulting in me making far too difficult of levels. A common complaint from our play testers was that the level required them to move too quickly and was overall challenging. This was an oversight from me in that I'm creating a game that is for someone who, overtime, has an increasingly different perspective than me. I know this is a huge issue in the industry when making games, and it's main solution is frequent playtesting. The playtests gave me insight into what I should do, and I feel more confident now in my ability to make levels for these players. Although I do hope to still have playtests as I'm sure with time my perspective will once again deviate from the player's.
On the left is what my first tutorial level looked like, which was perceived as difficult. The right image shows the beginning of a refined tutorial level which already looks more simple.
Another issue was my speed at completing cards, my current semester is extremely busy and so I can only work during select durations for my group. I quickly have found a way to work with this workflow though and that's with long periods of time dedicated to building levels. This process specifically requires a long time from me put in to test things and play around. I don't make much progress in an hour period, but if I can set aside four hours to work on a level I will have it done by the end of that period. While that might seem long to my teammates, their cards are structured around specific goals and mine encapsulate broader ideas like an entire level. When I sit down first I try and find what I want a level to do and then I achieve it. This is a long process of tweaking and restarting. I found this to lead to levels that are overall fun and exciting, and this could be seen on the faces and reactions of our play testers. Of course, this was from the combined efforts of my entire team, but I believe I play an important role in presenting our games mechanics to the players in a digestible and exciting way, which are my main two goals when building these early levels. As the levels go on, such as level two or three, I hope to focus more on challenge and excitement.
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