Peer Review (part 2)

Peer to review: Niels de Jong
Practicumpartner: Bram Jonkers

Core mechanics (in order of importance):

Walking: is used as a ways of traversing the room and reaching different parts of the (environmental) puzzle
Climbing: is a big part of the level, it is used to reach new heights and is essential for finishing the puzzle (one of the "Keys"/artefacts is hidden on a high pillar.
Jumping: is not used very often in the level, only as an extra device for completing the climbing puzzle
Shooting: Is only used in the short segment where eagles attack you. It is not particularly meaningful, but is more of a change of pace.

Interaction-loop

Choice Clarity- moderate
Choice Frequency- moderate
Choice Quality- low

Goals Clarity- high
Goals Frequency- high
Goals Quality- moderate

Action Clarity- moderate
Action Frequency- high
Action Quality- moderate

User Experience ‘Guidelines’

• The ‘Fun Factor’
I think this would be a fun level, there are lots of things in the level that change up the pace and the mechanics used in the game are used in many creative ways.

• Player Ergonomics (quality of player experience, no learning by death & frustration)
If the player takes his time to look around before jumping to certain death, the player can discover most of the actions necessary for winning by just looking around. If the player is impatient however, it is very possible to die on the same jump several times. Most dangerous things get announced before they become dangerous, so it is always possible to prepare for dangerous activities.

• Level Flow (keep moving...or the opposite!)
Yes, you do keep moving, but it's a difficult obstacle course so you won't be going very fast. The road is rather linear though, so you don't need to take a lot of time to think about your next step.

• Rhythm (roller coaster or else...)
There are many things in this level to change up the pace, such as the sudden lava river and the eagles. It's not a roller coaster, but it the rythm graph is certainly not a "straight line".

• Difficulty (let players win, not the designer)
Since the level is rather linear and the challenges are not all that difficult (cross the rope, climb the tower, kill the eagles are all not really a testament to the players skill), the level does not score all that high on this point.

• Wow Factor (memorable moments)
This point has pretty much the same elements as the "Rythm" part - the surprises are the most memorable in this level, especially the sudden lava at the beginning of the level.

• Hooks (to let your level ‘pop’)
These also consist mostly of the nice change-ups in the pace of the level and the long balancing-parcour run in the middle part.

Ten principles of good level design:

• Good level design is fun to navigate:
The level has backup paths for when the player makes mistakes, the path itself uses a lot of mechanics and really empowers their use to go through them, so the level is fun to navigate. However the path is quite linear, so it might nog have a very high replayability factor to it.

• Good level design does not rely on words to tell the story:
The level design somewhat lacks in this section, the xplicit story is definetly there, however the implicent and emergent story are quite limited, the player is not free to choose the order or path he takes (as this is linear) and the event have to be completed in a certain way, for example you have to kill the birds, you cant choose to spare them.

• Good level design tells the player what to do, but not how to do it:
The level design does this in a good way, the player is shown certain goals to achieve/ require, and there are specific paths to find that lead you there, but the game does not show you these paths on it's own and does not tell you how to go through them either, that's for the player to find and figure out.

• Good level design constantly teaches the player something new:
The level design is made around using previously mastered mechanics, so it does not really introduce anything new here, it does introduce several different scenarios for different mechanics, but not specifically any increase/ change within the mechanic's puzzles themselves.

• Good level design is surprising:
The level design makes use of a lot of changes in pace and environment for example enemies appear after quiet paces, the level adds urgency by flooding the room with lava. So it does make use of this.

• Good level design empowers the player:
The level design definetly makes use of this, the palyer fights of enemies, destroys parts of the environment and navigates over and through normally impossible paths, which are all scenarios that help in empowering the player.

• Good level design allows the player to control the difficulty:
The level design is a linear path throughout the level, and although it has a single point in the beginning where failure/ taking a wrong route is forgiven, the rest of the level does not have this and is linear (no branching paths of varying difficulties or anything).

• Good level design is efficient:
The level design is fairly efficient, it does use a lot of differenct slightly varying forms of the same thing, but these could all be made in modular fashions (the pillars could be cloned, aswell as the lava platforms, the eagles, the ropes, etc.).

• Good level design creates emotion:
The level design is focused around creating tension and urgency, making the player feel like they need to escape quickly (after having stolen a treasure), which is properly shown through the design by making the player be chased by enemies for having taking their treasure, the room filling with lava to really force the player to make a quick escape. So the design is really centered around bringing forth this emotion of being an explorer and stealing the ancient treasure of some old civilization, which is exactly what they were going for.

• Good level design is driven by your game’s mechanics:
This is definetly the case, all the puzzles and problem in the design are focused around using your specific and different mechanics to solve them, and really figuring out which mechanic to use in what way for each of them, going through a lot/ the most of the mechanics the player has available.

Peer Review - 3D Blockout Niels

Peer to review: Niels de Jong
Partner for this exercise: Bram Jonkers

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 (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