Level & Tutorial Design
SWBC DX is a game developed as part of DARE Academy 2022 and released on the Google Play store. My role as level and tutorial designer had me designing, testing and iterating to give an intuitive and easy to learn experience for the player across nine levels with rewarding encounter and boss design. I also pushed for accessibility changes to the gameplay which earned us the Unity Accessibility award.
Built in Unity.
Process…
Team Project | Unity | Adobe Illustrator | Google Slides
Step 1 | Research
Step one as anything is to research existing shoot ‘em ups and see how those developers designed their waves and balanced the game. I didn’t have a lot of knowledge on this genre therefore this was key to getting the design right.
Step 2 | Enemy Designs
The programmer made many of the enemy Variables visible therefore it was easy for me to create different enemy types with various functionality. I was able to define enemy speed and bullet pattern which enabled a lot of flexibility. The goal of each enemy was to act differently and fill the screen up with bullets using a variety of patterns which creates different ways the plater has to approach them.
Step 3 | Enemy Waves
Enemies moved following a spline and therefore I wanted the process to be as modular as possible. Each enemy type were given a series of paths they would follow and saved along with the number of enemies that would appear per that wave; this meant when creating the level I only needed to drag the wave into the array making it a very quick process. In general I would add the waves randomly, play test and adjust accordingly. This process went through many iterations to ensure difficulty didn’t suddenly spike in places, every level needed to follow a steady increase.
Step 4 | Dodge Sections Greybox
These were classic greybox designs with the aim to make the player react to the scenery and move out the way. Each level had a unique theme therefore the dodge sections had to match. for example the space station level needed to feel different to the desert planet; eight in total were created. Testing and iteration were key to making sure the game difficulty increased steadily. A key part to the design was adding a repeating structure; such as pillars, to make the player feel like they were travelling faster than they actually were.
Step 5 | Level Mechanic
The game had level goals which the player could unlock, these goals gave the player medals which would be required to unlock the next level. As part of this each level was given a unique mechanic. For example, in the desert level players had to destroy a certain number of crystals.
Step 6 | Bosses
Eight bosses were designed; one for each level, which needed to feel unique and feel consistent with the level mechanic, as well as needing to increase in difficulty. Bosses were given multiple phases as is common in bullet hells. These were designed in much the same way as basic enemies were except they had a little extra functionality which allowed them to behave differently such as bullet patterns which lasted a certain amount of seconds before changing to another pattern.
Step 7 | Tutorial
I redesigned the existing tutorial to improve the first time user experience and teach the player the meaningful mechanics while in a fairly safe environment; It was important that players couldn’t fail these sections. This included teaching the colour swapping mechanic and the dodging sections as well as highlighting important keywords. Where possible icons were used to show the required actions such as swiping and tapping.
SWBC DX - Tutorial Design Deck
