Hey everybody!

It's me again, Kepsert, Giraffe fanatic, and developer of the compo game named Phasebound (markup links don't seem to work atm, will get back to it soon? Phasebound

I just wanted to share a couple of thoughts when it comes to level design. First some basics:

• Besides the main mechanic, I have a total of 4 actual gimmicks.
• These gimmicks are spread out over a total of 15 levels.

Now, the levels are pretty short, but it's still quite some content to go through (most of the time is taken from the fact that main mechanic is rather uncommon). Now, one of the things I struggled with the most was anti-cheesing these levels. Making players follow the intended route as much as possible. How am I, in a game that gives the player almost unlimited freedom to travel all over the screen as they choose, during a compo that only lasts 48 hours and with basically no playtesting, going to get rid of as much potential cheese?

Well, I sat on this for a long time, approximately 2 minutes, when I came to an answer which I will now share as a tip to y'all:

• I don't

Players are going to find cheese. Players are going to find skips. We use the data of those moments to either patch it out, or leave it in for speedrunner purposes (especially if it doesn't ruin the game from a casual perspective). Instead, for the jam, I made sure that potential places that would allow for cheese (mostly due to my own design flaws, 48 hours isn't a lot of time!) would not end in a softlock.

I welcome you to try different routes, find speedrun strats, find skips, and share them! Found anything cool that seems off from the recommend path? GIF or record it and drop it in the comments at Phasebound

Anyway- if you haven't yet and you're looking for a platformer that people seem to enjoy (commenters would never lie, now, would they!?): give my game a try. It's called Phasebound and it's got a giraffe.

PS. Looking forward to the end of the jam deadline- will be playing through games on stream tomorrow after work and then most of Wednesday. Good luck to y'all on the final stretch!