September 18th - Emotion Lens

This week in my Game Design I class, I was tasked with creating a level to convey an emotion. The goal was to have someone play my level at the end of the week and see if they felt the emotion that I chose. I had been playing Astro Bot recently and I wanted to replicate the feeling of fun that I got from playing that game. So, my chosen emotion was "the joy of play". Following in the footsteps of Astro Bot and other collect-a-thon platformers, I decided to make the objective of my level collecting puzzle pieces. The reward for collecting them all is a fun image to look at.

My hope was that by creating unique and "playful" situations for my playtesters to collect puzzle pieces, they would feel the same level of fun that I felt when being rewarded for simply playing in the worlds of other 3D platformers I wanted to mimic. For example, I felt like I was always being rewarded for exploring a level to its fullest extent in Astro Bot, so I placed coins or collectables along anywhere the player might want to go. I also created a little soccer field with a goal. My hope was that players would be inclined to kick the ball into the goal simply for the fun of it, and then be rewarded for doing so.

Overall, I was very excited to see how people would react to my playground of platforms and collectables. A follow-up on the feedback will be added to the next devlog!