Level Design Highlights
The level design for Curse That Magic Cat! was meant to display and focus on specific types of gameplay we wanted to encourage players to engage in. The two levels that I designed (5 & 6) were designed for 'Destruction' scoring and Potions, two systems that I also designed for the game.
Level 5 - Destruction
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Level design: I designed the level to create clusters of breakables, giving the player both an entertaining opportunity to smash a bunch of stuff at once, and to allow them to plan where they're going to get the most "bang for their buck." The aesthetic theme of the level is a complex of dining and lounge rooms, with a large dining hall at the end - perfect for tables with breakable plates and cups everywhere.
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A design challenge: I needed to create a shortcut between the "lounge" area and the final dining hall of the level, however because of how the loft pieces of our mod kit were designed, there needed to be some empty space between the two rooms. Our modkit wall pieces initially couldn't support the connection between the two areas, so I solved the problem by creating a "hidden" room to occupy the necessary space required by the modkit, which then became a little easter egg with its own achievement for discovering it.
Level 6 - Potions
Level design: This level was built to give the player many opportunities to use and experiment with potions. Until this level, potions were not incredibly common, and thus players often felt compelled to use any potion they could find. This level provides them with more meaningful choices - roll the dice on the teleport potion, or take the speed potion for a guaranteed edge over Magnus the Wizard?
Choices: As this was the final level, I wanted to make the shortcuts both more challenging and more rewarding, and in the case of the chandeliers over the brewing area, giving players a choice - with their platforming skills, players may cross from one elevated room to the other for easy access to two spell books rapidly - or, use the chandeliers to drop down to the brewing pot where this level's Maelstrom potion is located. Much like the availability of different potion types, the shortcuts gave players different gameplay rewards based on their playstyle.
Game Design
Potions
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The design goal: add a new layer of mechanical depth to the game
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Idea generation: When we settled on a "fantasy/magic" theme for the game, I immediately thought of some kind of randomized magic system to implement, and went to work prototyping it in the early stages of development.
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Core "potion" pillars:
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Provides a randomized-but-learnable change to gameplay
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Implement an additional "rarity" system to balance stronger and weaker potions
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Use potions as additional tools for player, avoid hinderances or significant game stoppers
