Try to use this on your own levels and take time to conceptualize more ideas before starting to design if you feel like you might lack the means to properly finish your level! If you have fun making the level, chances are you and other people will like it for months and years to come. It's an athletic farm!" (A - You can vividly imagine what the level is like!) "Mario encounters bouncy sheep that move around, chickens he can pick up to glide, as well as birds that replace parabeetles. "This grassland level takes place at night" (D - Okay.) "I wanna see what I can do with incredibly powerful springs" (C - Vague, potentially exhausted very quickly) "Mario is taking a day off" (D - Yeah but what he doin tho) "I've always wondered how a level that takes place on a farm would play like" (F - Not even an answer) "In this water level, you have to hit the 4 switches to unleash cthulu, to face dire consequences in the next level" (D - Obviously a 'bridge' level in the episode and necessary, but no gameplay concept for it) "My level is acceleration, weaponized by means of repeatedly overheating machinery" (B - Vague, doesn't address moment to moment gameplay) Compared to "I wanna make a pyramid level" where you might've just taken a pyramid tileset and put down some blocks and enemies, because that technically is enough to fill the pyramid slot in the episode, even if the tileset and music could be replaced at any point and nobody would notice.īut once you have a concept on your hands which you are intrigued by, that's a very powerful shortcut to get going and have fun designing. Giant boulder? Trap door? Fake treasure?" It gets the creative juice going immediately and designing many sections of the level will be much easier because of it. When making such a pyramid level, you might find your thoughts immedaitely shift to "okay, what kind of traps can I come up with. But more importantly, the answer provides a common thread for yourself while designing. This question is incredibly useful for 2 reasons: First, it makes it easy to explain your level when necessary. To clarify, it's absolutely possible to give a passionate answer to a level that is intended to fill an episode slot, by alluding to the core idea that takes place within the pyramid: "I wanted to make a level where Toad goes treasure hunting and the player must evade Indiana Jones-style pyramid traps!" Now the ideas come sprawling. "I wanted to make something with Dolphins", rather than "I needed a pyramid level for my desert world". I've found that the best answers to this question come from passion, not filling slots in a world list. There are a few kinds of answers to this question, and from the answers it's easy to discern when you might be bottlenecked by your creative ideas for the level. Simple question: "Why are you making this level?" I'll focus on the former first, because it makes designing the latter much easier. Once, when you come up with the concept, and once more when the player starts playing. There are two points where a level technically begins. You and your testers are basically a trial run for your levels, but where to even begin? When powering through it and pushing it out as a rushed product, other people were also having a hard time being convinced by it, to no big surprise. If I couldn't even convince myself that the level was good, I would power through it or abandon it. I've found it historically very difficult to work on levels I wasn't convinced by. At the root of each level sits an idea, a concept that you wish to explore.
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