We're finally on the Final Stretch on this project and I'm sure the team is definitely a bit nervous at this point. We have all of our requirements out of the way, so nothing is holding us back in actually going forward from a requirement standpoint, so now our main concern is getting the game to the point we want to present it at.
My main role as the level designer currently is to get the level to a point that really shows off the gameplay we're trying to go for. However, I have a secondary role as well. I'm helping the systems designer with systems and UI, so that we can make everything as good as possible. There's only so much I can do as just a level designer, and so I wanted to continue to help with other things as well, which we all believe is the correct direction.
In terms of level design, the main thing I'm trying to convey is the differences between the zones. So, we have a plateau zone and a glacial zone. Aesthetically, they are very different. From a gameplay sense, I want to differentiate them as well. To start things off, I'm adding more areas of cover with stalagmites and pathways in order to make the combat more close quarters. Meanwhile, I'm keeping the glacier flat and largely open in order to allow the combat to remain more long range. I hope that with this, I can differentiate the gameplay between the zones to show that they are more than aesthetically different. This should also show the strenghts and weakness of both the melee and ranged characters in different circumstances.
I've also decided to help a bit more with UI. With some of the teacher's help, we have created stronger UI that can more accurately portray information at a glance in a more clean way. We want the UI we have to communicate the player's current condition and the enemy's traits, which we believe it can with this improved UI.
We still have some work to do in systems. There's still some problems in communicating information to the player, and we need more than UI to help with that. If we can communicate things effectively to the player, we can push our game to where it needs to be.
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