Hey sry for the late reply. I took a little break from Coursera and all of this for a little bit.
I watched the video and wow I would've not guessed that's how you would've used the terrain but it makes sense when you do. I feel that adding in a starter area in level 6 where it the jumping in-between terrain to get to higher places then introduce a longer singular wall would make the introduction to the new mechanic smoother. Also I would add in a UI Tip page to help players understand what mechanic they have now and how to use it in the beginning. A lot how in one of our first games when we set up an unpause page, so it would be the first thing the players see with out interrupting game play too much.
Thank you for the review on my game. The first level was a practice/tutorial level like yours. The disappearing blocks in lvl 1 was a test of mine to see if I could add it. The problem and why it is not present in any other level is that the whole tile map would disappear once it was destroyed so anything else I made would be useless unless I wanted to create multiple tile maps and keep track of them.
Level 3 I wanted more of an open place feel. I wanted a level that wasn't hard and different from my other levels. It was kind of intentional that you could skip a lot of it because I wanted the player to explore and see what a lot of the area was like. Thank you for noting the morbid background details I put some thought into it. It was a bit of a process to recreate the death animation into a tile.
Lvl4 the last half did feel a bit clunky but I just wanted the player to see some more repetition. The acid and maneuvering brought a lot of randomness and variability so I wanted to counter that with something that you could gage well but with a little twist. I don't Include larger enemies too often unlike my other game because they get int the way of each other and make the game feel clunkier. In level 2 I found out they can't traverse terrain too well so they are not actually all that imposing. I could've changed it a bit to make it feel harder or more challenging but I was running out of time. Also I didn't know how to put level four into the cell space in the UI. It wouldn't go above "main menu" so as a creative twists I just said "special level".
Hey as a tip for level design why don't you think of what makes a level fun. Or what does the average player like about this game type. 2D platforms like mobility and getting across terrain and maybe fighting enemies. With the Acid on my level 4 I feel that maneuvering and giving the player the chance to really dodge would be fun and I think that's one of the best things gameplay wise I added. Though I wish that I could've changed more and polished it more but the time constraints ended that.
In the future I would be happy to do more reviews for you even if its not Coursera related. If you have a discord we can add each-other because these reviews take a little bit to write XD. Also I could share screen with you sometime and show you what my thinking process for a new player is in real time. Though writing it all down still has its strengths like better composition of words to use.