Laying out the Levels
It’s 6am and I just spent the last 14 hours mocking up my 20 levels so that the developers can have a foundation on which to build the game. I did the entire set of levels in Powerpoint, it was surprisingly easy I guess I got one decent skill out of Investment Banking (still wasn’t worth it). For anyone who has never cared to or ever tried to lay out a game, even a simple one like mine, let me tell you it is pretty impossible to have any sort of intuition around what will play well.
Level mock-ups
Of course you have to consider user habits, the quality of the enemy AI and so on, and even knowing that and expecting future revisions it is still frustrating how much of a shot in the dark it all is
The question I grappled with most was how will the accelerometer steering affect game play…impossible to really know until we start fiddling with different filters to find the right blend of speed and control. I definitely want to avoid making a Labyrinth style experience, where the low friction coefficient makes steering so difficult. Another thing I didn’t really appreciate beforehand was how little real estate an iPhone screen actually has - you do have to be efficient in your design when it comes to games.
