Level Design Fall 2020 Playtest 2

Jordan Bogaards

09/24/2020

Delver – An Adventure Platformer Game

Feedback:

1. I’m a fan of the aesthetic! However, I don’t think your current character meshes well with the environment.
2. I think a classic puzzle that uses floor switches like you have here is a maze-like environment where there are plenty of doors that open/close, leaving the player to figure out which switches they actually should press and in what order.
3. I do think a puzzle game would gel better than a pure adventure game.
4. Largely I think giving the player more environment to see/making the camera further out would be beneficial.
5. I do agree that a new movement controller would work better with the format than the current/default.
6. Other: The camera tends to get very jittery when walking over the floor tiles due to their unevenness. If possible I would remove individual colliders for then in favor of box colliders for whole rooms.

I really like the aesthetic, it looks really cool and medieval

I think a good puzzle would be needing 3 keys for a door, and there are multiple switches that change which doors open what like in the level, and you need to press them accordingly and change which ones you press to get all of the keys

I think a puzzle game is more suited for this type of game

I think the camera could be lower so you could see more up ahead, there were multiple times where the camera got obstructed behind a wall or something similar and it was a bit annoying to deal with

Yes definitely, the movement is a little weird and can be hard to gauge how far a jump can go and I think that more stiff and responsive controls would make this game a lot better

1. Map looks good, but the character needs to be changed to fit the aesthetic
2. I think the pressure plate idea is good, it just needs more fleshing out and perhaps be more maze-like to confuse the player
3. It was more puzzle like than adventure
4. I think raising the camera to be more above the player would go along way. I didn’t know that I was able to rotate the camera, so there were a lot of times where I couldn’t see the player character.
5. Definitely. I’m not a fan of the default system. It feels too floaty and unresponsive in any of the games I’ve played that have used it.

Planned Changes:

1. First Person Camera – players found the camera to be a major issue with how small the environments are, with walls often getting in the way. A change to first person would likely improve this drastically.
2. More Stiff and Reactive Movement – the players found the movement was really hard to control when platforming so I plan to make less of a momentum based system and more instant movement with a short time from 0 to 100% speed.
3. Add More Puzzles – pretty self explanatory, planning to combine and stipulate more on my mechanics.
4. Splitting Path – I got a lot of people saying it felt very linear, so I plan to add some more exploration elements.
5. Tutorial – Add some way to communication the controls in the game itself
6. Add Sounds
7. Add Trap and Switch Models
8. Add UI Elements
9. More Polish and “Juice”
10. Win/Loss State