Overview

This project was a 8 week exploration of level design using Portal 2's in game level editor.

Role

This was a personal study of level design.

- Before starting on my level I tested the tools available to me so I could have a firmer understanding of the design I could implement.

- I then created a design in Miro that would help reflect the idea I wanted to create.

- While these ideas initially worked as the design progressed it was harder to decipher between the different floors.

- I also quickly discovered the size of these together was too small.

- After designing the level I wanted to block it out and start implementing the necessary pieces to create my first blockout.

- Players were often bouncing of the wall due to the second faith plate.

- Players were getting soft locked in certain areas causing need to restart and frustration.

- The second pass was similar to the first but fixed the issues we ran into originally.

- There was no longer frustrating gameplay. Players could backtrack with portal usage to prevent softlocking.

- The faith plate now properly delivered the player exactly where they needed to go.

- The main new issue was that better backtracking made the level too easy.

- There was also still one soft lock that could trap and frustrate the players.

- Added two new rooms with newer puzzles and utilization of lazers.

- Provided foreshadowing by introducing a locked cube button in the first room.

- Maintained the goal of keeping the cube with the player for the entire level

- This project taught me how much timing matters for puzzle games. Even a little too much time spent on traversal can slow down a level significantly

- Backtracking allows design to feel good instead of trial and error which can instead be frustrating

- Allow player freedom, they don't want to be handheld too much. Rather guided properly in the right direction