DAY 13
Somehow, out of nowhere, inspiration struck today level design wise. Managed to create a platforming section for the first level.
What's peculiar is that this was not really planned to come out like this. In fact it's nothing like planned. What was planned to be there was a down-sized version of the area with the Ancient Roman buildings. This down-sized version is still in the books to be in this first level, but for the moment I don't know where.
Why is this peculiar? Because I usually have a layout for sections to work with or at the very least a rough idea. Instead this section was built just by going with the flow. It was a little liberating and quite breezy to work on. Tested this section so that it does not have any sequence skips and fixed where that happened (whoops, scratch that, found one more, will fix after I finish writing this).
What I do not like is that I used the same placeholder rock asset all over the place and that kind of leaves the impression that the section is same-y. Gameplay-wise, it does not feel same-y, but it feels slightly tiresome. And this is a problem. Why?
One thing I know about testing games is this: when you test a game (especially one particular section) over and over and over again, the good mechanics tend to not stand out as "good" anymore and the bad mechanics tend to stand out like a sore thumb. In other words, they "degrade" over time: what's good becomes meh, but what is already meh from the get-go becomes frustrating or annoying.
This is why what I said before about the section feeling slightly tiresome is a problem.
That's all for today, see ya tomorrow. Bye