Megaman Map Reflection

 Underbrush Rush 

        For my level and the goals I wanted to achieve, the introduction of new weapons gave my level a whole new level of depth. With my level, the main thing I wanted to achieve was making the level fairly easy, but with optional secrets that would challenge the player. The problem with this in my first iteration was the fact that there were no good rewards for the player's efforts besides shortcuts. The new weapons gave me phenomenal rewards for players who went out of their way to find these secrets. The two weapons I chose were the flame sword and the power armor. 

    With the flame sword, I was able to hide secrets behind ice walls and add more danger to the oil hazards. With power armor, I could make some suspiciously high ledges that could lead to quicker, but more difficult paths. I also made it so the player could either naturally gain the power ups by playing through the level without interacting with the secrets, or they could go through secrets and find them early to gain the ability to skip through parts of the level.

    With these secret routes, I also made areas where you could only use one of the other weapons. For the fire sword I made a maze with oil so the player would have to exercise care when using the sword, lest they want to explode. And then for the power armor, I put enemies in the walls so they had to use the homing fist to defeat the enemies to get the other powers back.

    Most of my enemies were placed with the mega buster in mind (because you don't get either of the other powers until late in the level without the secret paths) the final room became a bit of a puzzle to use the powers in a very specific way. In order to easily navigate the room, you have to use the homing fist on the power armor to defeat the Koasaburo (top guy) before using the flaming sword to go through some ice, defeat the Peterchys, and move on. However, every single play tester had the instinctual impulse to use the flame sword to drop down before defeating the Koasaburo which made it significantly harder. While this section was frustrating at first, the play testers did seem to get their aha moment after a couple of attempts. This could have been made less frustrating for players who didn't get it quick enough, but I like how it turned into a puzzle for most people.

    When trying to balance combat and platforming I divided rooms of my level into categories of pure platforming, pure combat and both. I only had a couple rooms of pure combat after introducing the enemies. Once I felt the player was ready for more of a challenge, I added minor platforming sections to rooms with enemies. In between those rooms, I used platforming rooms to give breaks from the higher octane rooms.

    I felt I taught the players how to use the secondary weapons decently, but I could have done better. In the secret paths, I made very clear skill gates so the players would learn the powers and even challenged them on the powers in those secret paths. But in the main paths I was more crunched for space, so I did kind of skimp out on teaching the player how the fire sword worked.

    I didn't really have the space to let the players experiment with the new weapons. The secret path gives the fire sword a pretty good introduction, but I feel like everywhere else I introduced a power was in the middle of a fight, or an intense room. I feel like I should have introduced the powers a little bit earlier to give them more time to shine for those who didn't find the secrets.

    As for the secrets, I do feel like I could have done more to point them out as the playtesters had trouble finding them. I tried to communicate that blue bricks means secret, but it seems I didn't communicate that properly. I did have one of the rooms intentionally really hard to find, but that's because it's a difficult but big shortcut.

    I also did have to change the level theme from a crypt to a jungle/cave, which wasn't a huge setback but I did like the vibe of my level before the change.