Opdracht 5 - Peer Review

 

Peer to review: Niels de Jong

 

Practicum Partner: Merle Delen

  Information about the assignment:

 

Short summary of the level (Introduction > Problem > Solutions)

The player enters the level and is confronted with the first challenge; a gaping abyss right under the door. If the player was careful, they saw this before they dropped down and can use the grappling hook to get to the other side. If not, they drop down and have to climb back up to the starting point via some "stairs" in the wall. On the other side of the crevice is some golden artifact in some holder, next to another identical but empty one. If this gets picked up by the player, the second stage of the level starts.
Now, the level gets flooded with lava and a bunch of birds start attacking the player. After defeating them, the player has to traverse across an obstacle course spanning most of the level to get to another artifact hidden on a pillar. This one then needs to be taken back to the exit; however, the road to the exit is still kinda flooded by lava. The path you just took to get here has also become inaccesible. Therefore, the player needs to create a new route by taking down the damaged pillar in the corner. This will create a new path via which the player can escape. Mission succesful!

Difficulty/Tension chart taken from Niels's site

The Exercise:

Based on Tomb Raider ‘Gameplay Mechanics’;

• Come up with 2 or 3 Level Design Ideas around a ‘Problem’ that occurs in the ‘Introduction’ of the Level which will cause an ‘Obstacle’ which the player must ‘Solve’ by an environmental puzzle
• Focus: How the player is ‘visually’ guided through the level experience by ‘Tension’!!!

For each Level Design Idea:

• Create a ‘3D Blockout’ (in Maya or Unity / Unreal with proper naming, scaling, materials etc.)
• Design & add a Level ‘Legend’ (including gameplay elements, with color and symbol coding > ‘Info Graphics’)
• Include a ‘Flow Model’, a ‘Gameplay Narrative’ and a ‘Human Survival Instinct’ scheme or diagram (integrated in the 3D blockout is allowed)

For your convenience, we will use these sub-exercises as headings for this review. 

 

 

The review:

 

The (Tomb Raider) 'Gameplay Mechanics' and player Steering:

It most certainly is; Niels has done a great deal of research into the different mechanics of the game. He even made a list of all possible actions Lara Croft can take before starting his level design. After that, he also made a similar list for the different types of situations/problems that already occur in these games and used this list to think up several possible problems of his own. All of this was very well documented.
As for the tension, the player is guided fairly well by the way the objects are layed out across the room, however there is only one path through the level that the player can follow. The player isn't always specifically guided through this path but sometimes just has to find their only option. (Tip: maybe include some branching pathways to give players more options?)
Although he only made one level, this level consists of very different phases and the puzzles are well thought out (using different gameplay mechanics such as balancing, grappling hook, climbing, breaking objects etc.) which makes for a fun route anyway.

 

The 3D blockout:

The blockout was very clear and had different scenes for the different stages. A downside is that, although the color coding was applied consistently, the legend was nowhere near the actual blockout and could only be found in the middle of his documentation, which made the blockout very confusing at first. (Tip: add legend to the actual blockout for clear reference)

Flow/Narrative/Human Survival Instinct:

The flow chart was very clear (as can be seen in the image above). The Human Survival Instinct could only be found in the blockout and is explained thoroughly in the accompanying video. We would have liked to have a paper version as this would have been much clearer and faster. The Gameplay Narrative could only be found in the spoken text in the video. It's not bad (and again; very thorough) but there is no clear overview of the Narrative. We had to watch the video a couple of times just to write the short summary, which could have been so much easier if there was something like a Narrative Flowchart or just a written summary. (Tip: give all information given in the video in written form too, it's fine if that's just a shorter version but it makes the entire thing so much clearer)

 

 - Bram & Merle