Hi Everyone! We’d like to share a bit of process on designing the levels of our Ludum Dare submission; バクラウ Bloodless. Check out the game on the link below;

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/bloodless

We spent half a day discussing what the main mechanics of the game would be like; what would be the behavior of the enemies, how to diversify them... It seems to be a long time wasted on one simple thing, but when it comes to a large team of 8 people from different areas it is important that everyone is on the same page before starting to develop game content.

We get a little goofy at some moments of the jam, it helps us enjoy the tense moments where time is short and scope is wide.

As the main mechanics are defined and discussed with the team, we begin planning the levels of the game. Our minimum scope for the game to work is simple and has little content to diversify it. So we bet on the progression of the difficulty to hold the player through the feeling that he is becoming more skilled.

Our level design process began a little looser with only pencil and paper as tools. We have designed some room layouts with positioning of different sizes and props. We have also planned spawn points for use in enemy waves. Each stage consists of 3 waves of enemies to prevent it from becoming too repetitive with the variety of enemies we had available.

From the narrative perspective we have a ronin who’s going to invade a shogun’s castle, so we had to keep in mind that the game should begin with an exterior area, then proceed to an interior area. We thought of how to build the stages coherently to this story while still having a difficulty progress.

The game's simplified art style allowed us to have stage props early in the process of setting up the game rooms. For this we use Unity scene to position all the environments props and set the colliders position and layer order for each obstacle.

ENEMIES

Initially we talked about very different enemies, different weapons, different moves, etc. but since this is a game jam, we soon realized that there wouldn't be enough time. After some discussion we decided to start with Red, a swordsman that attacks twice but can be countered only on the second attack. If we had time we would create some simple variations.

Fortunately there was enough time to create two variations: White, a simpler version of Red, he attacks only once; And Shogun, the boss, he attacks four times in quick succession but only the fourth attack can be countered.

LEVEL 1

The first level serves as the game tutorial. We chose to do a fairly open area with few enemies. When the first enemy comes into play the game displays the message "dash to counter attacking enemies" on the screen until the player can defeat the enemy. The first two waves have only one enemy, so that the player can get the hang of the controls and timing of the attacks, only then we send two enemies at the same time.

Wave A: 1 white Wave B: 1 white Wave C: 2 whites

LEVEL 2

After level 1 we expect the player to already know the basics of the game. The first waves will have two enemies coming at the same time, but the level has some obstacles that the player can use to manage one enemy at a time. The last wave introduces one new enemy variation that has two attacks, the first one cannot be blocked (has a red color to indicate danger) so the player must aim his dash on the second one.

Wave A: 2 whites *Wave B: * 2 whites *Wave C: * 1 red

LEVEL 3

In Level 2 the red enemy serves like the area boss. In Level 3 we decided to start with a red to show that he is actually just a mob variation. We also thought of increasing the amount of enemies in a wave, so we used just an open large area for the level with little obstacle to give the player space to maneuver while learning how to deal with multiple enemies.

Wave A: 1 red Wave B: 2 whites, 1 red Wave C: 4 whites

LEVEL 4

The waves in this Level are very similar to the previous one, with the exception of a red in the last wave. The idea was to repeat the last challenge with less room to maneuver around and a little bit of obstacles.

Wave A: 1 red *Wave B: * 2 whites, 1 red *Wave C: * 3 whites, 1 red

LEVEL 5

This is the final Level. The idea here is to have a somehow tight space again, but with entrances at all sides so that the enemies could come from different places to surround the player.

Wave A: 2 red *Wave B: * 2 whites, 2 red *Wave C: * shogun

And that´s the end of the game (for now!). We hope that this post can have some use for you guys, and if not, we hope that you at least enjoy our game. Either way, It would mean a lot if you leave some feedback and/or share some of your process too.

Thanks from the バクラウ Bloodless Team!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/bloodless