Split Spirit
Summary: A cozy puzzle platformer where you play as a spirit trying to reunite with your other half. I designed most of the game's levels. With one being our prototype level, and the other appearing not only in the final game but also on the trailer.
Role: Level Designer
Project: Classwork
Team: Cosmic Canines (12 members)
Development time: August 2022-April 2022
Made Using: Unity
My first game with a double-digit team. I was the main designer for the team with my content even showing up on the trailer!
Lessons Learned:
Rapid Fire Iteration: Playtest your levels rigorously! Even small changes can change the overall feel of a level! My typical pace is 2 playtests for every 3 changes.
Working in a large team: This was the first time I collaborated with a team of multiple disciplines. I learned to navigate communication through art and programming to understand the team's wants and needs, and what to ask for to maximize my productivity.
Level Flexibility: make sure levels can be scalable! Pick and choose the most distinct pieces of the level and make sure those are good in the scenario where a level needs to get cut down or shuffled!
Creating the Prototype Level.
This was a unity prototype testing out various hazards we could use in the game.
I had learned of bouncy materials, force, and one-way platforms in my previous project, so I wanted to try them in our game.
This would prove so successful that 2 of the 3 hazards showcased appear in the final product, force planes and bouncy platforms.
This was another test level that I made much later in production. The purpose of this level was to show off the many possibilities of a planned second character, the fox, and its respective interactable, the hidey hole.
The mechanic and the second character could have interesting applications, including very dynamic movement. However, due to time constraints, the character was scrapped.
The hidey hole mechanic would continue to be developed until it was cut much later in development.
This is the prototype level we worked on for the first half of development, for us designers to test the mechanics. We were given some basic tiles and assets to work with, and I went on to create a large level with them.
The longest play session lasted 15 minutes! (This was 10 minutes over the expected playtime for a game in this class.
This is the beginning, which I used to tutorialize the basic movement and jumping. At the end, you’ll notice that there is a large gap; this is intended to be the tutorial for throwing to other deer.
This is the middle portion of the level. This is where I test the player's ability to execute more advanced throwing techniques, such as banking shots.
I tutorialize the banking mechanic with the tower of deer. Later on, there is a large banked curve on the left.
This is also where I begin to experiment with the more “toyetic” aspects of our game. This is why these portions are meant to elicit lots of sound.
I capitalized on these aspects by creating sections where the main premise is to simply watch the ball bounce around an area.
This is the part where I introduce the idea of bouncy platforms, which are presented by the red platform.
I intentionally made it so the player can see the platform and see that it is a dead end for the deer currently in use.
The bouncing mechanics required some tuning, which I manually did.
This is the final area of the level, featuring more complex banking challenges.
This part, as well as several others, such as the bouncy platform, would receive tens of changes throughout production.
As I obtained more playtest data, I would immediately refactor the level with small changes and then immediately playtest it for someone else. This resulted in rapid-fire iteration!
The original 1st edition of this level is dramatically different from the final version because of this!
Building level 1 in a custom engine
This is from the earliest version of the proper first level in the game's final release.
From here, I learned how to use the tools the programmers gave me to block out a level.
I applied what I learned from the Unity version here. I also factored in a new rule added due to the professor's feedback: no death pits.
Several ideas from the Unity build returned in the final level, such as the tower of deer the player must climb; however, they were changed to account for the current pros and cons of the engine.
The engine allowed us to work with the textures and then bake collision onto them. As the level designer, I worked predominantly with our square textures to make a whitebox of the level.
This white box also functioned as the skeleton for artists to add all of the detailing seen in the final product
I had expanded the usage of mushrooms after receiving feedback from professors to use them more often.
I created this section inspired by the mushroom section seen in the Unity demo version.
By this point in the game, I had blocked out where every mushroom would be, and all I needed to do was wait for them to be incorporated by the programmers.
After receiving feedback on the level's length, I increased its size, originally the final section of the level. was all the way on the right side of this photo!
When designing further sections, I went back and saw what I could expand upon in the current level, as well as what sections from the Unity build I could adapt into this level
Here is a version of the level that now includes its mushrooms.
It took a large amount of time and playtesting to get the angles of the mushrooms just right. Now, the player will consistently get the ball to exactly where I want them!
Some other things were changed too, such as adding large steps to give a break from the puzzles and closing many gaps together to increase consistency.
This shows the level near its final product. After multiple playtests and experiments, I found it too difficult to prevent the player from soft-locking themselves while trying to complete the puzzle, so I replaced some of them with a series of flowers that the ball can possess.
The flowers are static, meaning the player cannot break them. In hindsight, if I had planned the puzzles better, I would’ve created a puzzle that factored the deer’s movement into consideration.
When I was blocking the level, I provided details on how each area should look visually to help guide the artists toward the general vision I had for the level. This grassy meadow was one of those set pieces! We even used it in the trailer!
The details came from the original level sketches, which were divided screen by screen.
This made it easy for me as a designer to pace the level best and made it easy for the artists to understand how the scene flowed
Here is another example of how my blocking influences the art.
I designed this area as a cave to make this segment make sense, and then I made that vision a reality!
Even then, I made sure that all collision detection was sound, and various other details would be unobtrusive to the experience
This was the beginning of the other level I was working on, which unfortunately got cut.
Internally, each level was labeled after a season. The level in the final product was “Summer”. This one was called “Fall”. This level would’ve introduced the aforementioned “hidey hole” mechanic that eventually got scrapped.
I wanted to make all beginnings of my levels be similar to make a narrative of the player changing between seasons, being able to notice differences in the textures and details
The intent behind this level was to begin raising the ante on the toyetic aspects.
Each hidey-hole segment served as a vignette of sorts for the player to enjoy.
The tree-looking feature I called the “fox house,” where the ball would whizz around a series of hidey-holes in different directions, eventually landing on the next deer.
This last segment would’ve had many underground caves, with the ball bouncing and hopping through holes.
I tried to make each cave more interesting than the last to encourage the player to keep going in the level. Unfortunately, this is as far as the level got in development, as we had downsized the project due to the art budget.