Designer Devlog 5

Hello again! Sprint 5 is now over, and at the time of writing this, we are already halfway through Sprint 6. Overall, I’m feeling confident, as most of the remaining work involves finishing the level, polishing, setting up a few animations, lighting, and making sure everything is properly implemented (tutorial text, game completion, etc.). All of our gameplay mechanics are finished for the most part, only needing the final bit of polish to make everything feel more cohesive.

With that said, we still have our work cut out for us, especially when it comes to me making the levels. In this last sprint, however, some good progress was made. We decided that since we’re cutting down on the overall space of our level, and with the sunken city and lighthouse becoming more integrated with the port area, we should expand the port area and add more unique platforming spaces. This has proven to be both liberating and challenging, as I’ve decided to forgo much of the “realistic” placement of cargo containers. In the last sprint, I built a large structure made out of containers, with connecting pieces between these towers. This creates an interior space where players can platform seamlessly between the different connecting parts. Again, this ties back to the “playground” approach to level design. I’m essentially trying to make different play structures or spaces where players can platform in unique ways. This is liberating because I’m allowing myself to go a little crazy here, but it’s also incredibly difficult since I need to come up with unique spaces for players to use our movement system. And with how much freedom players have to move around the level, I also have to make sure each structure doesn’t overshadow the surrounding ones. For example, if I have a platforming challenge with a Memory Fragment on top of a tower, and another similar structure with a collectible on top, I need to ensure players can’t climb one tower and just jump over to the other, skipping an entire platforming segment. While I want to limit this as best I can, I also don’t want to compromise the scale and structure of the level because of it. At some point, I’ll have to be okay with players finding ways around my limits, and to some degree, I think this empowers them in a fun way. Sure, I don’t want to make things too easy, but if a player finds a creative way to use the movement system to bypass a platforming section, that’s something to celebrate. I just have to playtest and find the right balance between being too easy and allowing creative sequence breaking.

As for playtesting, I did discover a few new things. For starters, the change to having movement unrestricted from the original bounce angle in the air allows for much more freedom. I noticed a huge improvement in how players moved around the level, with players feeling much more in control. They felt they could reach spots more easily since they didn’t have to wrestle with their bounce trajectory. One thing to note was that while players really enjoyed moving freely in the air, they found it difficult to stop. When the player is moving forward at high speed, pressing the back key to slow down applies the same force as moving forward, which is negligible compared to the forward momentum. This makes the movement feel a bit floaty, as players have to wait before they can stop. On one hand, I like this because it forces players to use their gun for micro adjustments. On the other hand, it can be frustrating, especially when you use all your ammo to reach a specific spot. The obvious solution is to take notes from games like Half-Life and have the player stop immediately when pressing back. A part of me wants to implement something like this, but I think I’ll gather more user data before making such a drastic change to movement

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Another movement issue that needs to be addressed is that the player doesn’t properly stop when colliding with something. When the player hits an object in the air after doing a pogo, they slide past it. This preserves speed and can be nice in some cases, but overall doesn’t make much sense. A middle ground would be some sort of “ledge climb,” where the player gets bumped by ledges but otherwise stops when hitting an object. We might be too late in development to properly implement this, as much as I’d like to.

A few other notable things: some players requested having the FOV increase as you move faster. This would not only enhance the sense of speed but also allow players to see more of their surroundings when moving quickly. Some players also didn’t prioritize the collectibles. This is partly due to a lack of narrative incentive, but also because the collectibles lack any satisfaction when picked up. In the next sprint, we plan to address both issues by creating a short intro cutscene and adding SFX when you collect them, hopefully making them more rewarding to find.