Solace
Summary
Developed over 8 weeks half-time using our in-house engine TGA2D and Tiled as a Level Editor.
My contribution
Level Design
Game Design
Technical Design
Details
Reference game: Celeste
2D Platformer
Exploring the 5 stages of grief
Level Design
A lot of thought went into implementing the Five Stages of Grief.
The Anger section of the game takes place in tighter areas with more difficult and precise obstacles than what has previously been presented to the player.
Combined with the red color scheme and relatively large amount of spikes this would give the player subtle feelings of anger and frustration when trying to continue the journey through the game. Balancing this was a big focus since a section which was too hard would destroy the fun in the game and ultimately leave the player frustrated and unwilling to continue playing the game.
Game Design
For me it was crucial to nail player movement and lock the player metrics early in the process to avoid having to rework areas due to changes in the player’s movement. This turned out to be the right move as we could playtest early and focus on iteration of the levels and theme.
Technical Design
Working with TGA2D came with many challenges, one of them being the lack of a level editor. We therefore picked up and worked with Tiled as our main level editor. Tiled itself came with a lot of challenges that required creative solutions such as working in layers, with tilesets and properties.
