Dark Phaser

Dark Phaser is a 2D fast-paced side-scrolling platformer where you play as the Grim Reaper, traversing between the Light Realm and the Dark World to collect the souls of the dead while avoiding the Deadheads, mean souls that refused to move on after death. The player must solve platforming challenges by jumping, super jumping, dashing, and phasing between worlds. Upon completing each level the player is given a score of how well they did, based on the number of souls collected and completion time.

Engine: Unity

Development: 3 months

Team Size: 4 people

Role: Level Designer

Responsibilities

1. Designed and implemented Level 1 "Tutorial" and Level 3 "The Cave" from start to finish
2. Implemented every sound effect and music for each level to add juice to the game
3. Created the textbox system to support the tutorial level and the slideshow system at the beginning of the game that explains the backstory, enhancing player immersion

Design Goals

1. Teach player the core mechanics through play in the tutorial level

2. Lean into the main mechanic of phasing and make it essential to the game

3. Design challenges that requires the use of multiple mechanics at the same time, providing depth to the existing mechanics instead of creating new ones

Here in the tutorial level, the player is introduced to the phasing mechanic for the first time. I taught the player which button to use for phasing through a textbox pop-up and immediately showed them a scenario where phasing is necessary (to collect souls).

Later in the tutorial level, I created a simple jumping puzzle where one of the platforms is light-world only. This reinforces the usage of phasing, which is our main mechanic, and teaches the player through repetition.

In this section of Level 3 “The Cave”, I designed a part where players would fall down back-to-back ramps where they are met with spikes that would kill them if they’re not careful. This forces quick reaction time on the part of the players which in turn supports our core pillar.

This part of Level 3 introduces the broken platforms with spikes underneath, which appears again in Level 4 “The Ascent” in a more difficult form. While it looks like a jumping puzzle, players can actually stay on top of the platforms as long as they maintain movement. The design and the close proximity of the check point encourages active retry to find out this fact.

Postmortem

What went well

We didn’t have to change the initial concept of the game drastically. Although we’ve made cuts and additions of features, I’d say that the game is still recognizable from its original form in the brainstorming phase.
An initial risk that we documented is that players might not have enough incentive to use our main mechanic, phasing. I think we resolved this quite elegantly: by making it mandatory to switch worlds to collect souls to get a high score.
Our game ends up checking every game pillar that we planned to hit on: side-scroller, phasing, speed-running. As I said in the previous bullet point, we fully explored the potential of the phasing mechanic, the game is pretty fun as a side-scroller, and the player’s speed to finish a level is tied to the scoring system, meaning the less time they took, the higher their score. That allowed us to attract speed-runners.

What went wrong

We had to cut quite a bit of content due to scope restriction, so not everything I envisioned made it to the game.
Every playtester has something different to say about our game, and sometimes those opinions can contradict each other, so I have to pick and choose which ones to listen to and which to ignore.
Unfamiliarity with both Unity and Perforce costs us a bit of time.

What I learned

Asking for help from teammates is nothing to be ashamed of. My own shortcomings might be someone else’s strength, and I can help them with other things that I’m good at in return.
When you’re not the only level designer (or other professions) in your team and there’s no lead, it is generally good practice to each be in charge of a separate part of the game and don’t meddle in each other’s work. Still point out things that can be improved from a playtester’s perspective, but being respectful of other people’s feelings and personal styles when it comes to level design can be very important.
Maintaining a good relationship with teammates can be very helpful in team projects. Doing little things like bringing a snack for them, or going to lunch together really helps with bonding and it greatly improves team dynamic in the long run.