For my individual game prototype, I decided to make an old school platformer. I, like a lot of people, loved playing these types of games when I was younger, so I decided to create one of my own. My platformer isn’t like most however, in that in games such as Super Mario Bros., the level is linear, and one needs to move right to progress with the level. I wanted to go for a different approach, so I modeled my prototype after games like Spelunky. The level is non-linear, and has some higher levels of verticality. The player is forced to re-traverse through some areas to find items. A lot of planning went into the level design to ensure the player could get to any point in the level from any point. Enemies and obstacles were placed to provide difficulty to the player, even when he or she came in from the opposite direction.
I made my game in an environment called Construct 2. Since there wasn’t a large amount of time to fully learn something more in-depth, I chose Construct because of its ease of use, and ability to produce playable prototypes very easily. Programming the basic game mechanics (jumping and shooting) and loading in sprites for the visuals were very fast, and this allowed me to focus on more important things, such as level design, other game mechanics (keys, locks, doors, etc), and the flow of the game.
For future iterations, I think more levels are in order. I only made one level, albeit the level is fairly long. I think the game needs some music as well. I’d also like to add in more enemy types, and perhaps add some polish to game (things like projectiles not being able to traverse through plaforms). I received some good feedback, and I think the game could turn out well in the future.
Game Link:
http://goo.gl/wYsNmM