For my last brief all I had to do was create 10 levels for a puzzle game (easy right?) I have to introduce a new obstacle to make the game more interesting for the ‘ad-hungry players’. The puzzle game has already been made along with a couple obstacles already in there:
Not so easy now! – whilst keeping the game at its similar, playable self, I had to add something new to the game. This would be quite tricky seeing as I can’t change the fundamentals of the game itself.
My thoughts for a new obstacle were not limited and I thought of the endless possibilities I could add to this game. Although many people would think to add a new enemy that does different things to the already existing (tame) enemies, my thoughts differed. I thought that two types of enemies on a 7×7 grid would be more than enough to keep the players on their toes. Thus, if I am not going to add a new enemy – what can I add?
When I see the word ‘obstacle’ I don’t think of enemies, I think of objects. Therefore, my idea was to add something to a square that if the player was to walk onto that square, the object would effect them somehow. During my youth I used to play a game called stuck-in-the-mud, this game would direct me into creating this obstacle.
As you can see I’ve created a concept level design of the game with the addition of my new obstacle – Mud. The new addition will affect the players moves. The player has the ability to move two spaces to the enemies one, which inevitably gives the player an advantage over the enemies. However, once the player has gone through the mud, their spaces to move will go from 2 down to 1, therefore the player and enemies will have the same amount of moves, surely causing the player to think again about their moves. This obstacle makes the game more tense – with the option to make additional obstacles that act similar to the mud (e.g. Ice – freezes player for one move, Gloop – player can’t move for one move etc.)
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