Hey y'all

This week I wanted to talk a bit about the level design for OverGem.

Truth is, I'm not much of a designer, much less a level designer.

If you have been following this blog (lol, why though), then you might remember that the level I've been playing with used to look something like this:

Only when I first play-tested this level with my friends did I realise how horrible it was.

• The top portion of the level is pretty much unsused
• There's too much open space, which doesn't let the ricochet effect strut its stuff
• Gameplay actually ended up revolving a LOT around the center of the screen, most ricochet ends up just bringing players close the center. This probably show a huge tuning issue.

I set out to fix the above, here's the result (for now)

In the new level, there are 4 semi-enclosed areas at the 4 corners of the screen.

When players ricochet into this area, the smaller space means the ricochet is lovely

Additionally, its much less likely the player ricochets back to the center of the screen, because their ricochet is more limited to those semi-enclosed areas once they're in them. They'd have to find their way back to the center. This makes hitting an enemy player out of the OverGem much more rewarding, as when they have to find their way back they are losing precious time to capture the OverGem.

I happened to also have tuned the level and ricochet so that the player will more frequently ricochet into the top two semi-enclosed areas (as can be seen in the .gif).