#modular level design

So we all started with something like this.

which with a few clicks of the mouse and keyboard it began to look like this.

simple right?...no making a level is easy, making a fun level is hard. Making a fun level that's hard to beat because its challenging and not because its frustrating or broken...now that's a tricky one to pull off. but as always the old rapid iteration is the key to success. ‘Test early, test often’.

Level 1: Easy - Look Ma’ No Hands.

as I learned the hard way easy doesn't mean simple. but it also doesn't mean make it near impossible to fail. I went with the smart arse response of letting the level finish itself if you don't touch the controls. this may have been a little TOO easy. it also didn't give the player a chance to learn the controls or how to play, making this entry level a total bust. 

Level 2: Medium - Slow and steady wins the points, but the quick actually finish.

so with this one I wanted to let the player have a choice of going really slow along the narrow paths trying not to fall off and collect some points (the blue cubes) or just gain a little momentum and clear the gap, finishing the level in a single bound. what i found was that option B was a little less then obvious when they first looked at the level.

Level 3: Hard - You won’t finish this.

this was the level that I tried to pull every trick in the book out to make it difficult without being frustrating. Pulling everything from narrow paths to jumps to unsteady footing. little challenges where the player would hopefully look at their failure and say ‘that's where I went wrong, now i know what to do. lets try that again’ rather then ‘this is broken, you cant finish this’.