Level Design Issues

Playtesting always exposes level design issues. I want to share some of these issues that playtesters found in the first few levels of Tumbleton's Fortune.

These are the things that you didn't think about or simply forgot to add to your level. When a playtester gets stuck on these things, you just kind of facepalm yourself for not making the solution more obvious. Issues like these are bound to happen though, because during development you're playing your levels so much, it becomes second nature and you don't even think about it anymore. That is why playtesting is so vital for having a fun game.

Also, you can't get everything right on your first pass, but through iteration and constantly playtesting your level, you can get pretty close to being happy with your level.

Let's get right on with it.

The first puzzle of the game it a little too ambiguous for my liking. Players are tasked with attaching a giant bridge object to a block on the opposite side of them to cover a huge gap. The bridge object fits nice and snug into the gap.

However, because the game allows players to attach objects anywhere, there's a lot of incorrect ways to place an object:




A feature that would make this puzzle easier to solve would be to designate where the bridge object should be attached, especially if it's the first puzzle and the player is yet unfamiliar with the main game mechanic.



In the second puzzle of the game, the player has to position two platforms on a wall and jump on them to vertically traverse the wall. The idea is that the player would come up to a wall, try to jump over it, and realize that it was too tall. There's a path nearby that leads to the 2 powerup platforms that the player needs to traverse the wall.

The problem was that it took the players longer than I expected to realize what to do with these 2 objects and where to go next. They eventually figured it out by zooming out the camera and looking where the level would continue.



The area where the player has to climb the wall (top right). You can see the path that he needs to follow to obtain the powerup platforms to the left.



A better solution that would get rid of the guessing would be to have an arrow texture on the wall, pointing up. This would clearly convey to the players that they need to go up at that spot.

Another issue that I discovered from watching our playtesters relates to the game notifying the player what just happened. In one area, the player must push a block onto an unlock spot to unlock a door. The problem is that the unlock spot is to the side of the door, and the player can position the camera so that it's not looking at the door when he pushes the block unto the unlock spot.



When that happens and the doors opens, there's no visual cue to it, making it hard to figure out what just occurred unless you were looking at the door. A solution on top of an audio cue would be to write on the screen something like "Door Opened!"

Main Mechanic and Level Layout

I talked about the general impressions from playtesters for Tumbleton's Fortune here, but now I want to discuss 2 specific issues that I received good feedback on - introducing the main game mechanic to the player and level layout.

Right at the start when the player is introduced to the main gameplay mechanic of attaching powerup objects to anything in the level, the first puzzle doesn't communicate the full scope of that well.

The problem is that one puzzle is not enough to explain to the player how the mechanic works. While the mechanic seems simple, there's some small quirks to explain to the player. Things like

a) You can't attach the powerup objects to the player ball
b) Once you attach an object to the environment, you can click on it again to reposition it
c) When the puzzle is complete, the object is rendered useless and the player is unable to pick it back up
d) The objects can be attached anywhere in the environment - floors, walls, ceilings, etc.

Communicating all of these in one puzzle would be really intimidating for the player. Instead, having a level composed of small puzzle that focus on each of these bulletpoints would make the experience simple and intuitive.

A couple playtesters also mentioned that the space where the ball (the main character, Tumbleton) rolls is a little too big. More interestingly, one playtester mentioned that it's not the large space that's the problem, but that there's no carrot dangling in front of the player to lead him along! I thought it was a very curious observation, and I'm inclined to agree.

Each level is made up of what I call pieces - things like platforming sections, puzzles, enemy encounters are all pieces. It's my job as a level designer to match and position these pieces throughout levels to give the player an enjoyable and fun experience.

What the playtester is suggesting is some visual way to link these pieces. Instead of rolling down a long ramp from piece to piece, a better solution would be to guide him. Since Tumbleton's Fortune is all about finding treasure, the treasure itself will play a large role in this. Players will be led by the thought of finding more treasure.

Another way to lead the players could be by making more interesting scenery pieces that the players traverse. If a player just completes a piece and is moving towards the next one, there should be something cool up ahead that catches his attention - something like a huge pyramid, or a light in the distance.

I don't want to completely get rid of these parts, because I don't want to constantly throw challenges at the player. After a player solves a puzzle, there should be a short platforming section where they get to experience the joy of rolling and jumping around.

Tumbleton's Fortune playtest session #1 feedback

Last Wednesday marked my senior's game first official playtesting session. Sure, people tested Tumbleton's Fortune earlier while it was in development, but it was mostly me asking them specific questions like how movement felt, were the levels too big or small, and what did they think of game mechanic A, B, C, etc.

This time was different - I set the game up at our 2 designated stations and started inviting people to come check it out. Overall, the feedback was mostly positive which to my delight was better than I expected.

Our main game mechanic involves players picking up powerup objects, and then attaching them anywhere in the level. Getting players to understand how to use this mechanic and what they can do with it is a hugely important task. If players can't understand it, they won't enjoy the game, and won't be able to get past some of the later levels, no matter how good they are at platforming sections.

For our first official playtesting session, I chose to take a more freeform approach of not explaining everything to the player. I wanted to see if the mechanic was easy enough for players to figure out by themselves. I believe that the simplicity of a gameplay mechanic is closely tied with how "sticky" it is - how fun and intuitive it is to use. If a game revolves around a mechanic, it better be sticky, otherwise players will put down your game.

Once the players pick up a large, green and spinny powerup object (it will have particle effects emanating from it eventually so it will be impossible to miss), a message pops up on the screen: "You have picked up an object! Click on it and use it to help you cross the gap".

And that was it. It was up to the players to figure out that you can click the object icon in the player's inventory on the bottom right, position it on the screen, and place it.



Most players quickly figured it out after trying a couple things. A joyful "Aha!" moment followed their success which made me smile. Interestingly enough, after rolling across the bridge object that they just placed, none of the playtesters attempted to pick up the bridge object and reposition it or place it somewhere else. It's true that I never mentioned that you can do that, but in player's minds, once they used up an object to come up with a solution, they forgot about it.

Obviously, the directions won't be so ambiguous in the final version of the game, but it was a nice experiment into the psyche of new players.

A couple playtesters weren't sure that the object attachment worked anywhere on the environment, some thought objects could only snap to the ground. The 2nd puzzle where you have to attach platforms to a wall to vertically scale it aims to teach them that, and putting some text explaining that you can attach objects to a wall would solidify it.

Because of this however, I'm leaning more towards locking the object down after a puzzle that requires it is complete.



The movement of the ball (Tumbleton) was hailed as just right by almost everybody, which made me breath a sigh of relief. I spent a lot of time tweaking things like movement speed, velocity, friction, stopping speed, jumping height, and the general feel of the ball. It felt great knowing it paid off.

More importantly, players said that controlling the ball just felt fun. They enjoyed rolling and jumping around, which is a testament to the controls being sticky.

Multiple playtesters complained about how jerky and fast the camera rotation was, an issue I suspected they would bring up. I relayed this information back to the programmers and we quickly smoothened out camera rotation.

We had a similar issue earlier in development when zooming in or out the camera. You don't want the camera to zoom via clicks - fast movements in or out. Instead, you want to smoothen it out so it has more of an analogue feel, similar to how most RTS games do it. We fixed that early on, and I suggested that we also do the same thing for camera rotation while we were at it, but we put it on hold at the time. I'm glad the problem is finally fixed.



Since the game is a mix of platforming and puzzle solving, some players said that it was kind of a bummer that after having so much fun jumping around and navigating the terrain, they had to stop and figure out how to solve a puzzle. I think they said that because this was the beginning of the game, and they quite didn't know how to play it yet. In later levels, I anticipate players going through the levels in a more quicker pace.

This reminds me of the flow in Mirror's Edge. Subsequent playthroughs of the game were always more fun than the first because you knew where to go and where to jump, which helped you keep the flow and speed of the game going.

Some playtesters also complemented our graphics technology like the bump mapping and shadows, a nod to our graphics programmer. Even though most of the textures in our game are placeholder (they look too realistic), it's still nice to know that the technology is there.



In the end, Tumbleton's Fortune playtest session #1 was a huge success, and I'm looking forward to doing more of these in the future.

Introducing Tumbleton's Fortune

Tumbleton's Fortune is a 3d platformer with puzzle elements set in sandy Egypt. Players navigate the world and solve puzzles by attaching various objects to the environment.



2011 is my senior year at DigiPen as a BSGD (Bachelor of Science in Game Design), and I wanted to challenge myself both as a level and systems designer. I proposed the game idea to my 2 programmer friends, and we quickly formed a team for game class.

In Tumbleton's Fortune, players take control of Tumbleton, an adventurer exploring the mysterious Egyptian land in search of treasure. Tumbleton is a cute rolling ball smiley face with one of those sweet Indiana Jones-like explorer hats. Currently, we're just using an orangish sphere as a placeholder, but it will soon be replaced by an actual model. As you might have guessed, the Tumbleton's Fortune game title is a play on Naughty Dog's Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, one of my favorite new game series this generation.

The game is essentially a 3d platformer - you roll around and jump on various platforms. There's moving platforms, fire that burns you, bumpers and other crazy obstacles that you must navigate around.



However, there's a twist! The puzzle mechanic kicks in when the player picks up one of the many powerup objects scattered around the level. Powerup objects come in different varieties, but the simplest one is just another platform. Players can then choose to take the platform object and stick it to anything in the environment! And by anything, I mean anything as long as it doesn't clip through Tumbleton himself.

In later levels, players will be able to carry multiple powerup objects at the same time, using them in unison to solve challenges. Objects are stored in a small inventory on the bottom right of the screen.

The first puzzle that the player encounters is a huge gap that is too big to jump across. At the front of the gap is our powerup object. The player picks up the powerup, and attaches it to the opposite end, essentially creating a bridge that he can roll across. Nice and simple for the first puzzle and it will help players get familiar with how the object powerup mechanic works.




The second puzzle is an extension of the first one. Instead of placing a bridge across a gap, players will have to place 2 smaller objects in a vertical fashion to scale a wall that is too tall to jump over.



That's how puzzles in Tumbleton's Fortune work. Me and the team are still undecided whether to take away the objects from the player once they use them to complete a challenge. There's 2 sides to this issue:

On one hand, it's cool to always have an object that you carry throughout the level with you, similar to the beloved Companion Cube in Portal - it creates attachment with the players which is a powerful emotional connection.

On the other hand, if players just pick up all the objects after solving each puzzle, they can use them to potentially break how levels work, or even skip huge portions of levels.

A solution we're considering right now is to allow players to carry certain smaller objects with them throughout the level. As long as the objects aren't huge, players won't be able to use them to cross gaps and go where they shouldn't be allowed yet.
For all other objects, once the player uses it to complete a puzzle, he will be unable to pick it up again.

So platforming and solving puzzles with powerup objects is what Tumbleton's Fortune is all about. I'll dive into the types of these powerup objects and what you can do with them in a future update.