Level design and gameplay choices in our iPhone game

This blog was originally posted over at www.touchscreendev.com where we blog about our current game and game design in general.

Hi and welcome back :)

We are crazy busy at them moment with development and not least our personal lives, but we are moving along great, and it is time to let you all in on some of the choices we make when designing the levels for our game.
We hinted at this in the "Difficulty in games" blog, and now I will be going in to some greater detail, to let you know what is going on.

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This is what we try to tell our self before making a level: Make the journey to the top different and interesting for each level and more importantly, make it a different experience each time you replay the same level.
This way we hope to ensure that the game is fun to play more that once and that the player really gets some value from it.

We wanted all the levels to feature an easy and a variation of harder ways to get from start to finish. With greater reward being offered to the player for choosing the harder routes.
This is implemented in different ways. Let us take an example: the player takes a few steps to the right and sees a whole in the ground and a platform above it, here the player doesn't have any other choice but to get on that platform. Now once on the platform there is a choice, there are new platforms hanging a little higher, both to the left and to the right.
Basically the platforms to the right will be wider and the distance you have to jump between them will be smaller, making this the easiest choice for the level. And you guessed correct, platforms to the left will be more narrow and have greater distances to jump, calling for more timing and ultimately experience from the player.

In addition on the easy path up the platforms, there will be more "save havens" meaning that if you do not make a jump, but fall short of the next platform, you will not fall to great a distance, as there will be a platform below to catch you. On the other hand, choosing the hard way will punish not making the jumps a little more.

There is nothing wrong with choosing the easier way through the level, it does pose some challenge to the player, and lets the player experience as much of the game as possible in terms of advancing to the next levels. But if you decide to play for the highscore in the level or maybe you want to try and find some of the secret and hidden items in the level, then there is no other choice, but to wander of the safe path and go explore.

In the design of the level, we try to encourage the player that is on the easy path, to go explore right away or on his or hers next playthrough of the level.
This is done, by hinting at some of the treasure by putting them in sight on the easy route, but out of reach, this will force the player to think and not just run the game through on auto-pilot.
Sometimes access to some of the more special items is actually through the easy path, but you will not have enough time to both collect them and complete the level, so again we want to get the player thinking about exploring off path, to get those extra time bonusses that is needed.

Other than the secret/hidden items in the level, there are also normal collectables, that boosts the players score, some items gives more points than others.
The players score is in the end made up of the items he collected,the time he has left and if he found the secret item.
On that note, we use enemies in our levels as obstacles that the player needs to bypass and not kill. Meaning that if the player is hit by an enemy, then there is issued a time penalty, which have a direct impact on the score in the end.

There is no separate  life bar in the game and therefore the timer is all that more important. If the timer runs out, you have to start the level over.
This makes enemies a powerful tool in the design, and they are usually placed in transition areas, where different paths are available. So you cant skip encountering enemies by just picking the easy route every time. They will be there, and they will be out to get you! ;)

I hope this helped shed some light on what is going on behind the scenes, and as always if you have any questions or comments, please let us know :)

Peter

This blog was originally posted over at www.touchscreendev.com where we blog about our current game and game design in general.