I'm glad you're continuing too. My project is already graded, but would you play it and tell me what you think? Having the same judge seems interesting to me, someone to know about the progress being made or direction heading toward.
https://slrrr.itch.io/2d-platformer
Your extra level is my favorite among them.
Yeah :) I'll review yours.
nothing crazy really on levels 1 and 2, but I loved how everything shifted on level 2. I understand that you added randomized waypoint scripts to it which I think is a wonderful idea. However I feel that because of the gameplay we don't really feel that because we can easily get to where we need to go.
Level three I really like the wonkiness of it. getting out of the area and going somewhere new. I know that the waypoint platform is really important for completing this level. I missed during a rerun and there was nothing to stop my infinite downfall. I had to go to level select again to resume where I was. Level 3 artistically was refreshing to get out of the confined space but there was a little too much openness.
Levels 4 and 5 were my favorites because I feel like you added something really new to make your game stand out. Level 4 I felt was the most unique because atmosphere changed, we were underwater and could move so freely. It is very good for the game to have such variety. I will say that the level felt very easy to complete though. Easy can be a good thing sometimes it was very enjoyable despite not being as hard as the other levels.
Level 5 The jump mechanic brought in more freshness again. It was fun flying through the air with a mega jump. I also noted that you made perhaps a prefab of collectable shards circling around. I liked that you thought of it it seemed very invented to create and mechanically tedious. 5 was also easy to complete but was very engaging for its brief run.
Level 6, felt awkward. I played it the first time without knowing you could wall jump but through testing out the first jump was a bit more elongated on this one but it didn't help me get very far. I read about the wall jump and understood it could help. Again because the platforms are very far away from each-other it felt impossible to complete. There was also no alternative path to take incase you were to mess up and it was a little tiresome of having a hard and unforgiving level.
If I were to change something about level 6 I feel that I would give the player more chances to use the wall jump mechanic, and allow them to have more fun with it to explore what it can really do. It felt so limited because of the level layout and not the jump mechanic itself helpful to get through the level unfortunately. I understand that you probably had a vision of how the player would try and go about this level but for new eyes like mine it felt very unclear on how to actually beat it.
I hope that this was a good review. Would you like to review mine next?
also what do you think of my review? I would like to get better at spotting things to help out my fellow classmates.
You give the most thorough feedback! no one else mentioned anything specific.
The disappearing blocks on level 1 threw me off but it answered something I've been wondering, so they count as 1 object I'm guessing. It seems all the sound is missing. Your bonus level was my favorite dodging the acid on the platform ride was the most exciting part, it's well done, and i haven't seen the others try it. Is being able to skip most of level 3 intentional? Using the player death sprites that way was a bit morbid especially the animated ones cause it's like they're actively dying but it's an interesting idea that could be handy, could have given them individual chambers or used a new tileset slightly shifted to cram them together. The last bit of the bonus level i think could have been done differently if you wanted the giant walking enemy to have been the focus like either adjusting the timing or spacing the waypoint enemies out. anything you curious what i think of?
I can record my 1st playthrough of your next game if you'd like, recorded one of a rushed playthrough of your game after i was familiar with the layout. recording on windows is easy with Windows+G or Windows+alt+R i don't know if there's a mac equivalent but could be handy.
now i'm gonna ramble about my own game, forgive me if it's uninteresting. You can ramble about yours to me if you want.
ya know i was thinking actual level design might be a weakness of mine, i couldn't think of anything so i just threw em together then checked if they were beatable after i made the mechanics.
my level 1 was just the tutorial.
levels 2&3 i wanted to see if i could rotate the tileset and how the player dealt with slopes. level 3 i was gonna do something where the player spawned temporary platforms when he landed but i didn't know how to make them passible through 1 side at the time so i moved on and instead of deleting those levels i added a goal pick up to the end of level 3 and left them in just to let my peers see how slopes worked with the project as is. oh and the platform on level 3 doesn't move randomly, it targets 3 waypoints i childed to the player, the platform on all the other levels i set to move between the same 2 waypoints and then to the player.
level 4 i just wanted a water level but didn't know how to make it hard so i just flooded it with enemies then got distracted by how i didn't like how they moved.
level 5 the plan was that physics material with friction+surface effector = wall conveyor, didn't notice anything so i juiced it up and turns out it gave me a launcher instead, so i just placed background elements to highlight the movement and keycard location and sprinkled points around for if people wanna ride it multiple times and try and nab them.
Level 6 I just made my script to do something similar to my water and reset the amount of the player's timesjumped count on collision instead of on enter, seem collision is wonkier about tags so i just excluded that part and let errors that didn't effect gameplay slide, enemies don't have a playercontroller component or timesjumped and still collide. actually that script is in effect on level 5 too. anyway i randomly placed solid tiles and saw i could beat it, sprinkled walking enemies then just carved out a section of wall to poorly signal you can wall jump. with your feedback i'm thinking maybe i could have made wall jumping completely optional... or add just a couple more tiles. Also i didn't get to use floating water tiles like i originally planned.
made a video of different ways you can beat the final level if you're curious.
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.
np about late replies.
coool, sure add me. my discord is Slrrr#5131 wonder if it should put it on my profile page or edit out of this post later.
i haven't looked too into ui stuff, should learn how to have a page open at the start of a level or inserting signs.
oh and about the level select you have to do the changes in the prefab.
