Team Summary:
This week we decided to meet and discuss our current level one and the future of Dark Ages. We had a long discussion about how to improve level one such as implementing proper health indicators, fixing little details and glitches. We also contemplated on how to prevent level one from being boring because there are long areas where it is empty and there is no learning, punishment or reward for the player. We also discussed how it’s really aesthetics-driven rather than having a proper and polished gameplay. Moreover, we started planning level two and discussed a few aspects for level three such as removing the Factory and City level and going straight to the final mountain that leads to the sanctuary.
My Contributions:
For this week, I took the responsibility of level designing level two. I figured that I would focus on planning level two and three, while Averi, Fahad and Eva are fixing and improving level one. The sketches below are some of the aspects of level two, and I plan to lay these out in a way that increases difficulty through ramps, while having rests in between each puzzle and/or learning curve. As you can see in the image with connected and circled numbers, there is a planned layout for level two to evenly distribute the challenge and rest for the player. Because level one is the tutorial level and it seems to be quite empty, I wanted to saturate level two if new content such as the Screamer and Sleeper type of Sights, while also re-introducing the Watchers. We have also planned to introduce picking-up and tossing for level two. Because picking-up and tossing is a working mechanic, we decided to turn this from a secondary to a core mechanic. We found that having to throw pebbles should be a mandatory way to clear a puzzle rather than having it as a secondary option because it seems strange that the player can go through our entire game without using picking-up and tossing, yet it’s still implemented as a mechanic. I have also re-designed the Latcher for level three. The Latcher is an immobile black slime on the surface that slows down Solis when he passes by it; if Solis stays for too long on the Latcher, the Latcher will consume Solis. This design prevents any terrain issues that would drop the old Latcher design off a cliff when chasing Solis. This also provides a more sense of urgency when Solis is slowed down by the Latcher and a possibly red laser from the Sights may catch him. This also pertains to the metaphor of the Latcher as a “latching monster” even more because it has no eyes (Watcher)it doesn’t have a mouth anymore (Screamer) and all it does it latch onto Solis.
My Reflection:
I’m still worried about Dark Ages because there seems to be a confusion on the goal of the game, such as the genre and gameplay. Our game is very mood-driven, however we lack so much sound and music that the scary aspect of our game diminishes when presented to player. Specifically, our horror aspect is very mild and our game isn’t too scary because off the lack of scary visuals and music/sound effect. I am also worried about the game’s gameplay and game mechanic because it barely works and there is very little gameplay. For the genre, our game is trying to combine a platformer and a point-and-click adventure game/puzzle game, however it’s very hard to combine the two topics. The level design I created is for platformer games, but there seems to be a conflict with the “puzzle” aspect. Averi wants to have an explorative game where you visit multiple rooms and go back-and-forth to finish and puzzle and move on to the next scene (much like Fran Bow or Detention), whereas this is different from my aspect of the game, which is all about timing and platforms and navigating the map through a platformer game genre (like Mario or LittleBigPlanet). Both types of games are explorative, however we seem to confuse the two types and combine them which proves to be difficult. Our game ends up being hard to polish and incomplete. To solve all of these issues, we need to discuss and put aside any personal feelings and to clarify and focus the goal of the game.
