Postmortem

In this project, I made a 2D platformer with a special mechanics that player can collect characters to form a team and switch between team members. 

What Went Right

I’m very glad that I can finish this project with such a scale. I conceptualize this project into a very large scale because I have so many ideas to put into this 2D platformer project. Luckily I’m able to  finish it by three weeks. For this project I made 9 characters with different abilities, and 5 levels that connected to each other with metroidvania style level design. The game content feels very rich and player won’t get bored because the game constantly introduces new characters and there are a lot of things and areas to explore. My codes are also very stable so they allowed me to achieve a lot of ideas based on them.

Challenges

Level design and setting difficulties are challenges for this game. Since there are so many characters, I have to design levels for them that fit their special abilities. I also considered that the player may lose certain characters, so I build different routes in a level that fit different characters. Setting difficulties is another challenge. Playtesters’ feedbacks are different based on their experiences on platformers. For same level, some of playtesters told me that it’s too difficult, but there are other playtesters told me that they want more challenges in the level. I want my game to be challenging, but I don’t want it look scary for casual players. Therefore I balanced difficulties of earlier level and make later level more challenge. I also try to make a boss fight in the game but I find that it takes much more time than I thought to make a good boss fight. Currently the boss fight is a little boring, I may improve it in the future.

What I Learned

This is my first 2D platformer and I learned a lot from this project, including basic stuff like how to make characters and different platforms. I did a lot of coding in this project and gain more experiences for Unity. Also I learned the sequence of making a platformer. From playtesting I find that the gravity and mass of player may need some adjustment, but I cannot do it for this project because if I change the gravity it will affect the height of jumping and level designs. For next project it may be better to start with the movement and physics parameters of player and then do the level design next.

Next Steps

I spend much more time than a regular 3 week project on this game so I do want to keep developing it in the future. Currently there are some points that I want to improve. I did the UI of pretty quick and they can be better with more interactions and feedbacks. The player object need larger mass and gravity scale to make them feel more controllable, and levels need to be adjusted after that. The boss fight also need improvements to be more interesting. There isn’t many monsters in the game, so it will be fun to add more monsters and small bosses. This game can also be expanded to a larger scale metroidvania or rouge like game.