Mega Man Lv2 Feedback

Today in class we tested out everyone's second levels of Mega Man. This level was supposed to be a harder and more advanced level. This level also had to have a jungle and/or forest type of theme to it.

Some things that went right in today's playstesting would have to be happy the players looked when playing my level. I was worried that some people might say that the level was too easy and get bored while playing it. However, I got a good amount of feedback that mentioned how there was a good challenge to the level as well as relaxing times too. Another thing that went well was how difficult my level got. I purposely made a couple parts very annoying just to make the players make strategies to try to defeat the challenge at hand. This ended up working and that's why it was something that went right. Something else that was good was the end of the level. I was worried that I made it a little too easy, however people were struggling a little which was all a part of my original design. So, I would say that this was a huge win for me today.

This is an image of the spawn area in my level:

With all of that being said, there definitely were a couple of things that did not go as planned. One of the things that went wrong was with the kick mechanic that I added into the game. I unfortunately made it possible to skip the part where the block is that takes away a certain ability. It was not too important because there are not that many times where you can use it but I just wish I would have thought of that happening beforehand. Another thing that went wrong was how short my level was. Some players took 10 minutes while others took 5 minutes to beat my level. I just think that I made the level a little too small, but players still took a lot of time to play it which was the main goal. 

This is an image of the kick area in my level:

The next time that I work on this level, there would be a couple of things that I would change. The first change would be to make it possible to not skip the kicking stage of the level. That just seems to be the main thing. However, I would also add a couple more skill checks. I just think I didn’t have enough and that is based on some feedback that I got. With that being said, the skill level required for the level was definitely enough for the players playtesting today and there was no problem with the skill level at all, at least that I could tell. Going off of that, I do think that the critical path for this level was obvious. There was only one part where two paths split up, but then they merged back together, so there is no real wrong way to go in this level. 

This is an image of one of my skill checks in my level:

Moving onto the overall flow of the level, I feel like the flow of the level was nice and wasn’t chaotic all the time. There were many areas where I allowed the players to rest and regain their confidence before moving onto the next stage of the level. There also were circulation elements that definitely helped with the overall flow as well and insured a smooth gameplay experience. In the end, I had a great time making and playtesting this level as well as seeing other people playtest it and I am looking forward to the next project that we are going to start.