Heavenly Descent: Obstacle Assault Level Showcase

[T37col]

Heavenly Descent

He’s a long way from home, I’ll tell you that…

Fun story about the clouds: I wanted the level to loop back to just below the starting area (dark souls level design inspiration)

About halfway through I realized the player could jump straight to the finish line if they looked down below the island. I tried a few solutions but none were effective until I noticed the clouds in the background. I took one, scaled it to a reasonable proportion and plopped it right in the middle to conceal the bottom half of the level from the top. That also made the leap of faith parts a little more intimidating. That was fun.

Anyways, here’s my level, looking forward to seeing everyone else’s

[Maverick1868]

Nice job! I like the way the clouds made the level feel so different and love the story of discovering some random element you could use differently to solve a problem or create a new feel. That’s level design at its best.

Clipping through the clouds was weird but I bet some effect we don’t know yet could make that work out better. Another effect that might help this is if you had a spline running along your path of the level with some sparkling element that can only be seen from a distance to give you a trail to follow. Twists or turns beyond 30º are more interesting but always make some players lost so you have to fight back against that.

That gameplay was ruthless! I might suggest more saving platforms that catch your fall and reroute you to earlier in the challenge but I suspect this may also just be the feel you were after. Did you get a checkpoint system working in this? It looked like you didn’t lose a lot of progress when you fell at the end.

[T37col]

Hey there, thanks! No I didn’t setup any checkpoints, I stealthily readjusted the positioned of that last island behind the scenes so the player could consistently make the jump, haha. It was too inconsistent before that slight tweak

Yeah, the clipping was weird but it was a last minute fix and didn’t want to spend too much more time on the level so I could continue through the lessons. And yes, I wanted it to be tricky and slightly confusing but without a decent checkpoint system that would definitely make it 10x more frustrating lol. I will take what I learned from this course and apply it to future projects. Thanks for the feedback, Marverick!