I’ve shown a bit of this in previous posts, but I thought I’d post a few more here.
Level design in this game was really fun for me and I wish I had more time to do more levels. I had long lists of ideas that I never got to implement. Maybe as DLC or an update I can do some more.
Working out a level for a platformer reminds me a lot of how I used to “make games” when I was a kid. Nintendo Power used to run maps of full levels of games like Super Mario Bros 2 or Duck Tales, and I’d follow along with my finger pretending to play the game when I wasn’t near my NES. My friends and I at school would make up maps on paper at lunch and have bottomless pits, mazes, traps and enemies, and we’d use a lot of imagination to “play” the levels. Really no more imagination than we had to use to make Atari games as exciting as they were.
When I was trying to figure out what kinds of lamps to use and how to make a section of a level interesting, I’d go to paper and it dawned on me that I was doing the same thing I’d done all through middle school. It was fun.
I tried to make the levels interesting, picturing them like large paintings you play through, or a giant prison structure. I tried to think of clever angles for them; one involving dracula’s castle, “alcatraz” being the prison.
Some levels I didn’t get to make, like “Museum” was going to be a series of paintings that would change layouts and color schemes depending on if a switch was up or down. Another was “Eastmost Peninsula,” which would take it’s layout from the first dungeon in zelda. “Tire Fire” was going to have you rolling down a series of corridors on a wheel with hot rocks along the ground. “Traffic” was a level I did a rough draft of in the Cavern where Penumbear had to find his way around a long line of critters moving at a slow volume.
It’s really been a blast working on these, here’s some maps I drew up while working on levels. Should be noted that they did often change during the process, so I’m not giving away too much here!
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.