3D Game Level 2 - Feedback

12/4/2022

3D Game Level 2 - Feedback

For my second game level, I believe I did a good job designing the level and making it interesting to play, but I definitely think I can improve on some things. I believe what I did best overall was theming and decorating the level as an old looking castle with a huge courtyard and a sort-of archer tower at the edge of the wall. I used a texture and painted directly on the planes to make the walls and ground respectively, and just used five by five blocks to make all the walls and ceilings so the size could be edited and the texture would match up. I used switches and doors to create the one way doors I talked about in my concept, and used switches and counters for the main castle door.

I think I also did a decent job at spreading enemies across the map so there is never just random downtime, and adding large groups of enemies that need to be gone through to get to level objectives. I also added smaller groups down the alternate paths to add a sense of choice between fighting and infiltrating, this way even if you do choose to sneak by the enemies, it’s not too easy and still requires some fighting to make it through since the level is supposed to be a harder difficulty. As for difficulty, I think I did a fairly good job of making it hard to beat, and the different approaches give you the choice of going in swinging, which may be a bit faster but more difficult, or sneaking in, which would be easier but will take a bit more patience, depending on how hard you want it to be so the player can choose the difficulty for themselves but are still rewarded with a faster clear time for choosing the more difficult path.

The critical path is definitely made clear by the large groups of enemies gathering around certain areas, making them look more important than the rest of the level and drawing you towards them. This also encourages exploration because though you can see your goal clearly, you can also see the alternate paths to them very clearly, which gives you the choice to explore these paths or go through swinging to use brute force to get to the goal. I used ramps, which were pretty much stairs, to separate the separate paths from the ground level fighting areas, and I believe this was a good way to separate the fighting warzone type area from the stealthy back entrance approach.

As for what I can improve on, I definitely need to find some way to add a boss battle because as for now, the castle door opening is the end of the level, but with the castle behind it built up, it is a perfect spot for a boss battle to take place. On the topic of enemies, I would like some sort of different enemies to spice up the level, as right now the enemies seem very easy to kill and get boring after a while. They are also poorly themed for a medieval theme, but none-the-less work for now. I could have also added more one sided doors to the left side of the level so that you are forced through to the big castle door, while right now you can go back through the entrance after flipping the switch. Doing this would make the level flow a lot better because after doing the left switch you would be forced to fight the rest of the hallway’s enemies and would be placed right in front of the main door, which would be open if you did the right one first, and the back path and switch for the tower, so you can lead directly into the second switch after the first.