Field Punk

Project INFO

Level-Ups

My Design Process

Gameplay Design

This is a platforming game that plays around magnetic fields. The player gets to conjure a positive or negative magnetic charger. Since we were using “A” to jump, I chose to map the armors to the controller’s triggers and mouse buttons to artificially create the concept of “opposites”. We wondered about making an “attract” and “repel” button instead. However, since this game is focused on “challenge and achievement”, I figured that having the cognitive difficulty of switching between magnet behaviors would be appealing for our target audience while also keeping the mechanic in-theme to some sort.

It’s important to note that the magnets do not just attract to themselves. They actually invert/add vector speed in their direction based on the player’s current speed and distance. This was intentional to 1- Have more realistic magnet mechanics, 2 - allow for unique speedruns, and 3 - Afford interesting level designs requiring things such as attracted to a magnet to build up momentum and then repelling to mage a “super long jump”.

Level Design (gameplay footage at the end)

When designing the level for the game I was heavily inspired by Nintendo’s 4 step level design philosophy called “Kishotenketsu” which comprises the stages of “Teaching, Development, Twist, and Conclusion”. I also added a little of the previous level mechanics in each new level to keep them fresh to the player.

To start I had to break down our mechanics into what needs to be taught and in which order. You can find the breakdown of mechanics per level at the end of this page with a gameplay recording to follow through.

With the mechanics broken down, I was able to then paper prototype the levels I needed. Once finished I grabbed the best level designers in the school and went over the theory with them. After 4 iterations, I had a solid plan for 5 levels that saved me hours of testing and implementation. All I had to do then was build it and start testing.

It’s important to note I originally made more than 1 variation of each area. This meant everything could be included even if one variation was bad while allowing me to pick the greatest of them all. Post-testing after removing the “failed” areas, I had 3 solid levels.

Testing Design

In this project, I went all out in testing. The tools I used are Pre/Mid/Post-test surveys, Screen recording, Facial recording, and unique levels designed to test different things. We tested for:

1- Control Feel

To test this I made a level of precision-based platforming and 3 different stages with different difficulties, that way I would have a base to compare general performance and individual performance. In between testers, I would also alter things like control responsiveness, ground and air drag as well as others.

2- Level Design

Once I had control feels iterated I could then playtest the difficulty and intuitiveness of each level. I broke down the level into multiple “areas”, each with its own challenges. I would then go over each area to check for facial and vocal expressions to figure out what brought our players more engagement. Then I looked at each area's completion time and the number of deaths to then come up with a “rate” for each area, allowing me to know what needed to be removed or iterated. I repeated this process three times iterating the levels in between each of them.

3- Input/Time

I realized that some of the best platformers would lead the player to be faster or slower based on the tempo of the song. And so, I went through all our footage and mapped out every input done by every player to figure out the Input/second rate. This would give me a good average of how players feel comfortable moving around the level. I then coordinated with our Sound Design so that the BPM for the theme song of each level matched that rate.

Gameplay Footage & mechanic/level breakdown