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Alex
shilts
-Work in Progress: Aesthetics-
Team Lead / Lead Programmer / Level Designer
The Millennial Stone
2D Platformer || Unity 4.5 || 5 developers || 2 months
Level 3, being the penultimate level of the game, had several specific design requirements:
1. Push the player towards more advanced applications of the mechanics
(Wall-Walk and Dash) and introduce circular traversal
2. Integrate a large amount of vertical movement, because this level takes place as the player
climbs to the top of a massive temple
3. Use a large environmental scale to instill a sense of smallness in a
greater forgotten world
The level uses massive background sprites and makes heavy use of the Parallax System to make the cave that houses the golem's body feel expansive and hollow.
The level ended up using a large-scale setpiece to justify the contstant upwards traversal. In this level, the player scales the ruined body of a massive derelict golem, which the player is unaware of throughout. At the end of the level, the camera pulls back to reveal the twist.
To accomplish this, the level is built almost entirely out of curved surfaces and circles, creating a much more organic and complex player path than in previous levels.
I designed and built the 3rd level in The Millennial Stone, titled "The Forgotten Behemoth". This level takes advantage of many scripts I was writing while creating it, including the Cinematic Camera Movement, Sprite Parallax, and Moving Platform scripts.
LEVEL DESIGN
The Layout
The Layout
The Forgotten Behemoth
I have no idea what I'm doing.
Scroll down for the Level Design details
Level Walkthrough
and an image gallery Walkthrough of Level 3, broken up into sections with the critical path:
Hover over each image for the Section # and a description
 Section 1The opening section of Level 3 uses the color scheme and music to set a more mysterious tone that found in the game prior. It also introduces the player to the advanced transition between circle platforms. The first Mural Orb can be found on the second circle platform behind barriers to introduce players to dashing on circles. |  Section 2This section gives the player several circles to play around with inter-spherical traversal. Here, we add hazards and barriers to the mix, allowing the player to become familiar with previous mechanical blockers in this new platforming perspective. |  Section 3This section creates a sense of scale by having large sprites in the background parallax in such a way to suggest that the cave this level takes place in is massive. The camera also pulls back and offers players a better view of their environment. |
|---|---|---|
 Section 4This section throws the player into a more advanced platforming sequence between multiple circles, asking them to tighten their platforming rhythm even further. There is a Mural Orb off the beaten path should the player choose to explore. |  Section 5This sections gives the player a small cooldown period after the previous section's difficulty spike. The player slowly walks around a large circle that creates parallax effects in the distance and lets the player just enjoy their surroundings. |  Section 6This section ends the cooldown period created in Section 5, and throws the player into a complex series of circles, spikes, and barriers. All of this happens around one large sphere, creating a constant sense of relative down that players return to as they rotate around the center. |
 Section 7This section asks the player for a tight reaction time as they quickly move between claustrophobic platforms. This interior area contrasts with the open feeling of the rest of the level to set up the following cinematic moment. |  Section 8In this section, after the player lands on the last circle of the previous section, the platform floats out into the open air towards the exit. The camera fully pulls back, revealing the entire level and the twist that the player has been moving through the hollow remains of a massive golem. |  Section 9This section, like all ending sections of Millennial Stone levels, contains the murals that are activated by the collectible Mural Orbs. The orbs fly into each mural, highlighting the image and revealing more about of this mysterious world's past. |
Below is a narrated video walkthrough of the level, discussing the level's concepts and design goals:
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