Level Design: GOBLIN HEARTBREAK MASSACRE

Claire Bronchick

The Idea

I started out with the idea for this gross little goblin guy. My first instinct to make him the villain, but then I realized (talking it out in class, thinking it over) it would be more interesting to make him the main character, and, inverting expectations further, make a cute flower the bad guy; the goblin is broken up with by the flower, and he gets revenge by feeding it things that he loves but are bad for it (soda, gasoline, ice, etc).

Design round one

Above are my initial drawings and variations on real objects: the goblin and flower have been basically unchanged since the beginning of the process. As for the barriers I received as feedback the idea to make them actual texts…thank you, Maddie.

Design round two

After the first critique, I added actually emojis to my barrier ideas as well as real texts, finalized the harm collectible, and designed the background, which is just compiled photos of paper and cardboard. For this game, I’m really interested in bridging between real and digital items. I also made some new versions of the flower, for future level designs.

Game Check-in/Critique

Overall very positive feedback on Game v.1! People liked the textures (score) and Angela was actually amused by the visual hitbox around the flower.

But, I need to:

1. Add an animation to the player, so that when he enters the hitbox around the flower, he starts to cry;
2. Add an animation to the flower, so that when the player enters hitbox, the flower starts to smile or frown (TBD);
3. Figure out how to add a flash screen to the beginning, before playing
4. Figure out how to add a “you lose” screen if you pick up only the harm collectibles ;
5. When help/harm collectible is picked up, get it to trigger animations (perhaps I know how to do this?);
6. Make the sodas appear one after the other;
7. And, If a harm collectible is picked up, make an extra soda appear.

Changing Game Layout

Next up was trying a new layout for the game: Angela suggested that I try a less balanced organization, using the phrase “heartbreak alley,” which caught my mind. So I added a little alley to connect the player to one of the pickup items, so the goblin has to interact with the flower. I’m having difficulty adding effectors, but I plan to add a surface effector to the alley so the player slows down when approaching the flower, a sort of emotional resistance.

I like games! Bye!

–Claire Bronchick