Cosmic Campus

Since this was a game for Saxion meant for the Open Days, we wanted to create an experience that would relate to the study Creative Media and Game Technologies (CMGT). This is most present in the games design. We created a small adventure/dungeon crawler game where the players have to work together and defeat the final boss at the end. The game is online multiplayer.

When we were happy with our designs we quickly moved on to production. The team gave me complete freedom with the level design. So at first I opted for a dungeon layout, since this game has randomly generated layouts. Quickly after that I noticed it didn’t feel that unique to be in them, and the idea got scrapped.

Some early sketches of the level layout and rooms.

Not long after, I’ve started experimenting with more floating Island type levels. These levels contained crystals that the Artist character could use to get their powers. The team really liked this. Since the players had to travel a bit to see different islands, I wanted each island to have a good sense of place. This way it wouldn’t feel like wasted time to explore.

Since this game was meant for people at the Saxion Open Days, I kept the level design straight forward and went all out on aesthetics. Each island has their own identity and gameplay strategies (especially for the artist character). I made most of the assets myself.

For the tutorial island I wanted to go an extra mile. This would be the first impression for the player and it would need to teach them the mechanics. I had about 1 day to create this entire island and it has a great story. You see, when I was creating islands I mostly listened to Super Mario Galaxy music. I discovered that listening to music helps me put certain emotions in levels.

(Yes, we lowered the particles in the main game)

For the tutorial island in particular, I was listening to Cloudy Court Galaxy theme and managed to capture that feeling in the level. Since this we did not have time for UI in our tutorial, I made comets with instructions on them and the wind blows in the direction the player needs to go.

At the end of the level, the path splits into 3, one for each role, here the players would be taught the basics of their abilities in a small challenge.

I learned a lot about Game and Level Design in this project. In the end I wished we had gone for a static world instead of randomly generating the layout. That would give us a bit more control of the encounters and maybe make the game a bit more exciting. I regret not testing as much as we could have, we would have better insight in player experience if we did.

In the end, this game created really cool images!