First things first, I am an artist at heart, though I would like to think that I am a decent programmer. Programming is not necessarily my strong suit, but I was able to make it this far and it was certainly a struggle. When I originally enrolled in the Game Development degree program at Full Sail I came in with an artistic mind set. So, after many months of almost entirely pure logical thinking (something completely new for me), imagine my joy when I was tasked with designing our game’s sector! I am excited to have the opportunity to flex my artistic muscles once again and design something fun and engaging for our players.

Now, while I am an artistic person, designing something with such a grand scale as a whole scene/level to be explored is something that is new to me. What do players like to see? What keeps players interested and engaged? How can I make players excited to explore new areas? The big hurdle here is taking the time to plan everything out properly. Thankfully, with a little bit of research, I was able to learn a few fundamentals to begin to build a plan for the first puzzle in our game. 

Since we don’t yet have a level designed and blocked out, and there are currently few options in regard to level traversal (the player can only jump right now), I decided to start with the two principles of player choice and verticality to design the first puzzle. The idea is that there will be a few different directions to go from the start of the game, but there will be an area immediately within the player’s sight that might pull them in its direction. This is where the player will likely meet their first power-up, the jet pack. By giving the player a few exploratory options but making an interesting, spinning platform puzzle with a shiny object at the top, hopefully this will draw the player towards it from the very start. Upon completing the puzzle, I want the player to be able to look down at parts of the world and decide where they might go from there!