The Final Level

They never seem to end, these levels.
 
Levels have been remade, redesigned, rearranged and reevaluated at a ridiculous rate. The final outcome, purely from a design perspective, is fine. The levels flow nicely into each other and there seems to be a difficulty progression that suits our needs. Feedback from playtesters has, generally, been positive. The desired aesthetics are met. However, looking at the narrative, we fail to deliver.
 
Ambient Pressure does not deliver much narrative. The player is instantly thrown into […]

Level 7 – Workflow

In lack of anything better to write, the blog post of this week will focus on the actual workflow following designing of a level. This will show the seventh – and final – level designed for the game. With a high probability that the level will not even make it to the final product, I designed it to test all of the player’s abilities and knowledge relating to the game.
 
The game is set to feature three types of enemies and […]

Level Order

This week is, hopefully, the last week I will be doing levels for the game. A total number of 6 levels are completed. I do not keep tabs on exactly how many I have discarded, but many. Designing levels is much tougher than I expected, and it became much worse when trying to make the levels flow together coherently and beautifully enough to make it feel like a fun experience. And that is what this blog post is going to be […]

Ambient Pressure – Level 2

This week I experienced the worst possible pain imaginable when working on something. I lost it all. To cut to the chase, the valuable lesson here is to save constantly. I’ve always been bad at it, I’ve tasted this sour fruit before, and still I didn’t do it. Several days of work was lost as I accidentally forced shut all applications when restarting my computer, and about 5 complete levels were lost. This should not be happening.
 
So here, in this […]

Ambient Pressure – Level 1(prototype tutorial)

My role in my group is part Lead Designer, part Level Designer. As Level Designer, I’ve had a hard time figuring out the proper way to do my job. Realizing the best way to teach the player is a big undertaking and forces me to take many things in account, many of which is beyond my current abilities. It is still a process undergoing and what is shown in this blog post will most likely not be in the final […]

Game Design Document

My week has entirely been focusing on the Game Design Document for the game we are making, Ambient Pressure. Though I was, initially, fairly confused regarding its layout, it came together easier the more time I spent on it. I’ve had to rewrite several times because of a change of approach, and truth to be told I still feel that I might want to change things in it. But then again, I have been told that the document is bound […]

Update

Okay. So I wasn’t that good at updating the blog. My apologies. However, with full intention to break that nasty trend, I thought I’d give an update as to what I’ve learned so far.
 
Game Design is hard.
 
I mean, I knew it was hard. But not this hard. Time consuming like anything. We’ve analyzed, designed, discussed, cried, produced like there was no tomorrow – and in spite of all this, we only just now came to begin actual production of a game […]

Starting the blog

Hello world!
I am David Crosson. I’m a 22-year old freshman at Uppsala Univeristy, studying Game Design and Graphics. In this blog I will post mostly – perhaps even exclusively – about my time learning the fine arts of Game Design through the university.
Now do please stay tuned, as I will make my best effort to share my thoughts on the subject in a manner that does not bore you too much. I will try to post at least once a […]