Level Building : Level 1

We've had a change in game design.  We're shifting our focus to obstacle course design for our game.  The ninja theme is still intact as the player will still use ninja-esque acrobatics and abilities to complete the courses; however, we have decided to remove the combat elements from our game (i.e. attack abilities and enemy AI).  We made this decision because our deadline is starting to creep up on us, and we need to focus on the elements of our game that we have implemented solidly.  Our platforming elements have been constantly updated and maintained since the beginning of the project, so we decided to polish that mechanic.

That said, we needed to start building levels that suited this change in direction.  Since we have little time left before the project needs to be completed, we decided to assign more people to level design.  I was one such person enlisted for this task which I was agreeable with.  I was excited to roll up my sleeves, and see what I could build given my extensive experience with 3D platforming games.

Fortunately, one of our programmers cooked up a level builder in Unity 3D, so I could place the assets created by our artists with relative ease.  This proved invaluable as I could devote the entirety of my effort towards building levels with good flow, challenging obstacles, and general badassery (oh and secrets too).

After a good day of work, I finished my first level layout.  It was meant to introduce players to the basic abilities they have at their disposal.  Thus, each obstacle is fairly easy, and is made in a way that won't harm the player if he makes a mistake.  I recorded a run through on the windows version (yeah that means you'll have to stare at a block doing these obstacles instead of an avatar).  Here's a preview of my first level (music in the video was also composed by me).