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The challenge
To create a small map with space for a grappling hook, areas for enemies to spawn in, space for trees that act as physical health bars, props to be in the way for the player to make them use their movement options, and more...
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The picture above was how the map started and the image below is the final product.
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The solution
They were starting with movement and how the map had the player's movement abilities in mind. For every obstacle in the way of the player, there had to be a way for them to get over it, which was always either a way for the player to simply jump and parkour over it or for them to use their grappling hook ability which can only be used on tree materials.
The enemy spawns were placed in all corners of the map and two in the middle behind objects. The enemies spawned would always attack the trees that were the furthest away from them to ensure that the player had time to reach it in time.
The trees were placed in most corners of the map and in the middle. All of the trees have some sort of way to reach them. These trees would also never have the tree closest to them be attacked right after them, this was to ensure that the player had to use the most of their movement abilities and explore our map in full.
The map being an obstacle whilst also being a physical traversal tool for the player was one of the bigger challenges. At first, we had way too much on the map and had to cut a lot of it out due to it being too restricting. Later I found a good balance by not only having the physical big trees as traversal options but also small branches placed out on the map to give more options to the player to use with their grappling hook. The goal was to make it difficult to traverse, have many options but at the same time fun!
Level Design
System Design
The challenge:
To create a well-balanced game where the mechanics, abilities, mana, HP, enemies, and more felt fair but the players still felt like they were powerful.
The solution:
To name a few I had designed a system where I could manually choose a system of how fast enemies spawn, where they spawn, and how long it took between interludes via different packs of enemies. For example, if you had already defeated a pack of enemies but the timer was still running down for the next it would instantly reduce to 0 so they'd spawn immediately, resulting in action for the player at all times but also ensuring that players that performed poorly had a more difficult and stressful time handling the enemies.
Proper spawn points for enemies would have to work with this system to make it fair as well. Enemies would always spawn the furthest from the tree they were headed for to cut down, so the player would be able to tell what was going on.
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System design document example:
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​Enemies also work as mana refillables. The player is using their mana constantly via movement and different damage abilities. To ensure that the player sees some sort of understanding in playing in different ways and not spamming the best ability, I designed it so that they're required to damage enemies to the point where they glow red and then they can pick them up and consume them for more mana so that they can return to moving faster and using more powerful abilities.
Enemies consist of two types. The tree-cutters and the hunters. For this difficult progression to work even further, I designed the spawning of the enemies so that the player would get used to the first more simple tree-cutters at first and then have the hunters that actually go after the player spawn after a couple of rounds had passed so they feel like the gameplay is refreshing. There's also the health bar that isn't for the player itself but rather than all of the trees on the map combined. The enemies do not actually damage the player itself, they just slow him down, and since speed is such an important part of this game you still fear the enemies and don't want to get hit by them. The player needs this speed because they constantly need to go to new areas to protect a new tree that's being attacked, especially in the later rounds.
