MONTH 3: GAME BALANCING

MILESTONE 2 - LEVEL DESIGN ITERATION CONT.

Milestone 2 picked up by continuing to iterate upon my teammate’s levels in order to keep the level of polish, setups and balance cohesive with one another. I completed the Earth Dungeon and continued to proceed with combing through the Fire and Ice dungeon level block outs that my team members have created.

Starting with the Fire Dungeon level, I repeated the same process I took during my iteration on the Earth Dungeon level—gaps had to be added for the Player to dash across, as well as adding more enemies for pacing and balancing. Aesthetically speaking, the level was a little bland with a lot of inconsistent values when compared to the Earth Dungeon, so we definitely had to improve upon the levels aesthetic to keep it to the same standard of quality established. Game music and SoundFXs were added to give it that tone of a Fire level by mixing in the crackling of fire and ‘wooshing’ sounds to give the feel of heat passing through the level.

Some of the narrative elements were tweaked, but no major changes were required there. Overall, the Fire level’s initial block out was solid that mostly needed an art/lighting pass and additional enemies for the Player to fight with.

The Ice Dungeon also had a great foundation to build from, primarily it needed only aesthetics and polish. I focused a great deal on the setup my team mate designed which had a collapsing ice bridge that the player had to run across in a timely manner, otherwise they fall through dying in a pit. I redesigned it a little to have an insta-death mechanic occur should the player fall through. Before if the player fell through, they had only a few moments to escape through a portal back up to where they start from before their health drained completely. This setup was a little confusing and hard to communicate to the Player. Having a simple result of “Falling + Pit = Death” was a lot clearer to understand.

To make this setup even more interesting, I incorporated our Dash mechanic within this setup, so not only did the Player have to run across the bridge in any direction, they also had to Dash across a gap onto the bridge and then run. I thought this added obstacle would be a nice challenge and change up from the redundant grind of simply attacking enemies up to this point in the game. While this setup could be frustrating to some Players, it’s great to see the rewarding satisfaction when they finally time it out perfectly and get to and from the ice bridge with ease.

I believe challenging setups like these that aren’t based on combat (which is one of our core design pillars) helps give the Player a further sense of mastery over the game and it’s mechanics. Giving the Player these sort of challenges is what gaming is all about. Introducing different scenarios that the Player has to work out is both challenging and sometimes frustrating, but rewarding when executed successfully and with grace.

Unfortunately, at this time of writing, these levels haven’t undergone much play testing for us to receive ample unbiased feedback. So, we can only hope that these iterations and additional setups are met with good and positive reactions from players that do get a chance to play through the game once finished.

KEY THINGS I WORKED ON THIS MILESTONE:

• Iterating upon the design of the Ice and Fire Dungeon levels with art assets, lighting, SoundFXs and Music

• Scripting additional setups in the Ice and Fire dungeon to keep gameplay interesting

• Added enemy spawners throughout the levels to refine pacing so the Player consistently is doing something

• Balanced the Health and Damage values of the enemies so the Player is met with a fair challenge in both dungeons

• Added setups for the player to have to utilize their Dash mechanic

• Ran numerous play tests in the Ice and Fire Dungeons and identified case scenarios where the Player can break certain setups. Added fixes to those exploits so the Player cannot skip ahead or out smart our intended design