Picking level to play

Game Play & Game Design
#1

In my current project, which is a 2d platformer, I want to move away from the common way of picking which level to play. Often, especially in mobile games, the user is presented with one or more screens where each level is represented as a (possibly locked) button, usually with a star-rating associated with it, this is something that I have used myself but I want to try something else this time.

What I’ve gone for is a central hub sort of thing, kind of like Super Mario 64, where you go to different doors to go to different levels or stages. My question is; is this something that suitable for a mobile game, or is it likely that users will find it annoying having to actually walk from one door to another?

I am going to have 30-35 levels, so there will be a noticable distance to travel between level one and the last level.

#2

Personally, it sounds pretty annoying. Especially for a mobile game, which people only play for a few minutes at a time. If your level picker takes up that few minutes, that’s going to leave no time for playing, which isn’t very fun.

However, if you make it so the player doesn’t lose any progress, either in the level picker or in the level itself, then it might not so bad. I’m thinking of how Sworcery did it, where the entire game was split into individual sections (which was slightly bigger than a single screen), and the game automatically saved when you went into a new section. In that game, you had to walk all over the place, but since the walking was split up into the sections, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

I guess Fez is similar in that regard.

Of course, that will only work if getting around in the level picker is actually fun. Sworcery was just sorta fun to walk around in, but if all you’ve got is a typical platformer with mediocre (or even good but not great) art, nobody is going to want to spend 5 minutes just walking to the next level.

But in the end, it’s completely up to YOU. If it sounds interesting to program, and if it’s a mechanic you’d like to play with, then I say go for it. It doesn’t really matter what we say. Just try it out and see what happens.

#3

That’s what I was afraid of.

That’s my intention, I am also hoping that most people would tend to play the levels at least rougly in order making the distance required to travel to the next level short, say less than 10 seconds (most likely even less than 5 seconds).

If I had time and there was more exploring involved in my game I’d love to try Fez-like navigation, but for this fairly short game it’s going to be over-kill/misplaced I think.

I know, but while I really like building the games to the spec I thought up, it’s also nice to produce something that appeals to people. Which is why I am going to try to get more feedback on game-play choices for this game than I did on my last.

I appreciate your comments and thoughts.

#4

Portal 2 multiplayer does the whole walking to level thing IIRC. In Portal it gives you an interesting environment to mess around in, gesture to the other character, and play around. But otherwise it would most likely be annoying.

#5

It very much depends how you do it. If you have a number of side by side doors it will be bland, however if you create an environment where, say, all doors to world 1 are clustered in one place (thematically made to fit the areas you enter) while all the doors for world 2 are elsewhere and again aesthetically designed to fit the areas within. This is similar how Croc: Legend of the Gobbos did it did it.

Ultimately, yes, it’s a good idea to try move away from menu screens as they feel jarring between starting up the game and the actual gameplay, but by doing this you run the risk of being more obtuse.

#6

This reminds me of how the original Kirby (for NES, back in 1993) did its level selection.

Skip to a few seconds after 8 minutes, where Kirby beats the first level and then selects the second level.

Oh man this is bringing me back…

#7

Granted, but then you can say that about anything.

I will have the doors pretty much side-by-side, there’s not really a concept of different worlds in my game so I can’t group them by that. But I take your point and I’ll try to maybe group them a bit based on game-play mechanics required to beat them.

I really like the idea of moving away from a menu system but I think I won’t be able to skip one completely (I will probably keep some sort of main menu), but when it’s done well, like in Braid for example, I think it really adds to the immersion of the game.

You and me both :slight_smile:

#8

I think that the idea we’re all hinting at is that it has to be fun and engaging to just move around for this to work. Would it be fun and engaging to move around in this world if there weren’t any doors to the different levels? If it was just moving around and nothing else, would it still be fun?

In our above examples:

Sworcery was just fun and engaging to walk around in because of the art, music, atmosphere, etc. I would play a game that was just walking around in that game.

Fez is similar- just walking around was fun and engaging. That entire game was arguably just walking around, since there weren’t any enemies or anything!

Even in Kirby, the level-selection “meta level” was fun. The platforms were fun to get to, you could try out different abilities, etc. You could just waste time screwing around in the level-selection area, and that was fun.

Another one that comes to mind is Spider-Man 2 for PS2. Just slinging around the city was really fun, because the web slinging felt strangely realistic- and in fact, the developer of that mechanic, Jamie Fristrom, is making an indie game (Energy Hook) around exactly that.

This is a pretty true goal of every game: just moving around in it should be interesting by itself, since that’s probably what most of the game is anyway. But if you’re going to have a big section of the game (the level selection you’re talking about) devoted to it, then you better make sure that it’s extra interesting.

#9

I fully agree with that.

I am hoping I will achieve some of that, like you can’t get to all levels until you’ve found the grappling-hook for example. Some doors will be located such that you have to swing across some chasm. Also, and I am not sure I have the level design skills to do this, I would want the terrain such that you can find short-cuts, to keep it interesting.

Well there you have it, Jamie is making a grappling-hook based game where it works, so it must work in my grappling-hook based game ::slight_smile: