Back to the Platformer
The Game
Back to the Platformer is a 2D puzzle platformer where your mission is to find your way back home to the future after your portal gadget suddenly goes haywire. You must travel through different colored portals in different times and spaces order to open up secret pathways and continue moving forward to get closer towards your home.
Team Credits
Kyle Olason : Level design, portals, creative direction, code
Sarah LaDuron: Animation, project manager, music, code
Helen li: Assets, background, artwork
Development Log
5/10/19
While we wait for the assets to be completed, we used Unity playground assets in the meantime to create an outline of our puzzle platformer. We created two simple tutorials for the meantime in order to understand how our mechanics will be working in t as we come up with further in-depth ideas of our levels. We want the game to be challenging but also fun for the player. Health is added in the game mechanics so that when the player falls off the platforms they will take health damage.
5/5/19
When coming up with the paper prototype, Kyle developed the opening and the first two tutorial levels. For the actual level development, I created the outline of what a level would look like in order for us to gain a better understanding of how we might need to organize the mechanics in a sense that would be challenging to the player. Helen began development of our assets. The Opener level is meant to be a fun intro that gives the players a taste of the portal technology. Tutorial One introduces the portals in a straight forward manner. Tutorial Two introduces the speed zones designed to increase mobility and level design capabilities while giving the player their first hint of a puzzle. After these tutorial levels is where players are thrown into the maze.
5/10/19
While we wait for the assets to be completed, we used Unity playground assets in the meantime to create an outline of our puzzle platformer. We created two simple tutorials for the meantime in order to understand how our mechanics will be working as we come up with further in-depth ideas of our levels. We want the game to be challenging but also fun for the player. Health is added in the game mechanics so that when the player falls off the platforms they will take health damage.
Play-testing Reports / Player Feedback
Paper Prototype
Digital Protoype
Alpha Prototype
Beta and Final Version
As playtesting continued, our feedback consistently reflected changes we implemented from previous feedback sessions. Players continued to enjoy our game while giving supportive and constructive feedback that challenged us as developers to create useful and fun fixes to improve our game. In particular, players were thrilled to find where on the map they had teleported to and consistently reported not noticing how invested and focused they became as each level progressed.
Postmortem
Reflection
One thing our team had done really well was the level design. This part was thankfully and thoroughly developed by Kyle Olason. Evidence of this development can be seen in the feedback received by our classmates and what they had told us during playtesting. Many people loved how the difficulty gradually increased as each level went by. If the team had another 2-weeks to work on the game, our top 3 highest priority items would be: Smoother music transitions between levels, having a restart button, and options to jump to specific levels at the beginning of the game.