My roles as a designer on this project were focused on:
-
Creating the first level of the game.
-
Testing and iterating on the level in order to make sure that the puzzles and the level are balanced smoothly.
Level Design:
This was a great introduction that I had into level design, and allowed me to get a lot of great experience right off the bat.
The first and most important thing that I learned were the basics around level design, specifically when it came to integrating the different mechanics into the environment.
The main mechanic of the game was one where the game has a set amount of random puzzles that you must solve in order to get to the next location, but a set timer is given to the player, that resets the world at any given moment.
The challenge that I faced was making sure that the level itself had enough time for the player to conceivably reach one of the levels present, but at the same time, not enough time for it to be meaningless. We needed to create an environment where the player could make meaningful decisions on what puzzles they needed to make, which required a process of creating the environment with different objects, alongside the different kinds of things.
The experience taught me a lot about the perspective of the player, and tailoring things to a player experience, where the information for how to get through the level, where it is challenging enough so that a player can solve a problem, but not obscuring what the player needs to do with each section.