The Process of Making My First Game

By Louis Chan

I wanted to make a GBA platformer with intense pacing and multiple solutions toward the levels that require the player to have precise action, quick response, and choice-making ability.

Game Design

During the development process, I kept asking myself a question, "what is the fun?"

After I had a vague concept about the game I want to make, I decided to visualize it step by step and to prove the concept by multiple iterations in several milestones in order to 'fail quickly'.

In the beginning, I wrote a concept document about the core gameplay, the sense of the game world, controls, and the features along the player's journey. Then, I drew some levels on paper to test out the sense and flow between levels, set up the learning curve and allowed actions for the player to play through the game.

After the physical prototype and playtest, I started to build a software prototype, a rough demo to match the interactivity between the player and the game, only state machine and basic input controls. In this step, I started writing a design document to record and adjust the value settings; moreover, to drop down my thinking process and thoughts on the features that can help to fulfil the goal experience.

The rest of the development were iterations on the software prototype, add or remove features from it after evaluating feedback from playtesting.

Level Design To create levels that surround the core gameplay experience, I always kept reminding myself not to get too attached to polishing the levels. Therefore, I stuck to creating gray boxes when I was doing level design for this game, which is just the basic environment framework and the placement of gameplay elements that formed a look of different levels.

To guarantee the levels can fulfil the core experience, and to avoid intervention from other features, I didn't even have a character figure or animation for playtest, just squares moving around to figure out the pacing and layouts of the levels.

I divided my level design process into 5 steps and there are multiple iterations in each level:

1. Clarify what can be done in the levels (scoping) Decide the height of jump, the effect of power-ups, how long should the power-ups last, etc. because those decided the scale and pacing of the level. At this step, I have my game settings ready to be play-tested.
   

2. Combine available actions as solution drafts to the levels (playability) How to move from one level to another: move in directions, jump, power-ups, keys, etc. to make sure there are multiple solutions require different series of precise actions
   

3. Design mechanics and limitations in levels to let the player find solutions based on the drafts designed in previous step Set a timer to pace up the player, two platforms with a high verticality to force the player think of a solution: maybe I should try the power-ups?
   

4. Balance between difficulty and creativity through playtesting and evaluation on feedbacks Keep playtesting and adjusting the level elements to maintain the wanted pacing.
   

5. Set up tones and styles of the levels Create concept art and add art assets to the levels.

Here is my design document if you are interested.