Design goal
My team and I were challenged with creating a game with a limitation of 3 or less mechanics. And after hearing all the pitches in the team we decided to create a game where the player did 2 things: Walk
And use his Magnet gun to push and pull objects
I was in charge of elements of level design, the creation and design of concepts for the main weapon, working on documentation and playtesting levels for bugs/reporting them on Jira.
We made this as a semester long (13 week) prototype across 3 different classes. We had a lot of fun making this but also learned a lot about remote designing, precise and efficient communication. We are proud to say we were able to make 15 levels of game play as well as bonus areas for players to unlock. We hope you enjoy playing as much as we had fun making it!
Click here to go to the bottom of the page to download the game and check out the GDD.
Level Design
My team and I were quite ambitious, striving for at least 14 levels. This was because I determined that was the minimum number of levels to implement the Teach-Test-Challenge methodology with all of the game elements. Even though our game only had 2 mechanics, the players needed to learn about objects that they could move, objects that moved Them, enemies, gems, danger zones and more!
And although one of our professors showed concern over the size of the game, we had strong communication and project management tools in place. But the real hero of it all was the design to implementation pipeline we had in place that was made possible by a level generator made by the lead designer Jaylin Grierson.
Level Generation
The level generator worked on a tile based input system. In Unity, I would set down my level layout sketch as a sprite to reference. Then I would line it up with the generators grid, then plotted objects down by type, meaning I would fill each grid space with the corresponding item (for example the ground or walls). After ensuring I had the right prefab set to spawn, I would play the scene, which would instantiate the correct object. This made it possible to put more time and energy into each level's design as well as playtesting, bug control and art-ing phase. And despite concerns from some professors and peers, we were able to implement 15 levels, passing several rounds of QA, all with exciting art, lighting and even a boss level running on AI!
On the far left is a level sketch that I made on my iPad in Procreate, in the middle is an example of a generated level before the art pass and on the far right is an in game shot showing the polished standard of the finished game.
Project Management
To keep track of tasks (stretch, priority and everything in between), our team linked our Sourcetree to a Jira project. Here all of us were responsible for creating and claiming tasks, reporting bugs and ensuring people had their tasks done in a timely manner.
This project was the first time I used this tool but I learned quickly how to navigate it like a pro!
Take aways
This was the first time working on a project of this scale for this long of a period of time. I am thankful for the wonderful team I worked with, the chance to flex on my level designing abilities, the ability to master new tools and the pipeline that made it all possible.
In the future I hope to put my new communication, documentation and design skills to the test and that I might get the chance to work with that team again as our skills and compatibility made this project an utter joy to work on.
Wanna play?
If this design or game premise interests you, we do have this prototype playable on PC!
Just click on this stylish version of Magnus to be taken to my teammate's itch.io page to download and play the game.
And make sure to check out our GDD made with the help of Google Docs where you can see our progress and how we would continue to grow this game.
