Blog - Weekly Game 8 - Intensity (Spelunky Custom Level)
Wednesday, May 6, 2009I'm doing something a little bit different this week, as I'm behind in my weekly design challenges.
Instead of doing a new non-digital game, I'll submit as my design challenge the custom level I made for Spelunky last week:
The level is called "Intensity".
Here's a video of it in action (at a tragically slow frame rate):
To play it yourself, first download and install the free game Spelunky, which can be downloaded here.
Then download my level here (right click the link and select "Save Link As" from the drop down menu, otherwise you'll just open the level as a text file), and save the file into your Spelunky levels folder.
Finally, boot up the game and in the opening title screen room, press F3, which opens the level loading menu. Find intensity in the list, click on it, and load it.
(You might want to try your hand at playing the tutorial and normal game first for a while to get used to the controls and what all you can do in the game...)
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Designing the game:
I had always intended to do a digital game for a weekly game, although was intending by that to at some point throw together some really simple flash game. I suppose a quick level in Spelunky will do.
It's a pretty nice little platformer game and so I was intrigued when I found out there was a level editor hidden in the game that I could play with.
In any case, I decided to try and create a level that invoked a particular feeling. In this case, that emotion I went with was sheer panic.
As such, the pacing in my design is an interesting starting point for discussion. I admittedly do not allow the player to stop to catch a breath for very long, if at all, although I won't say there isn't a sense of pacing either. There are a few moments where an enemy will approach soon as opposed to immediately. However, the intensity is kept at a pretty high level fairly consistently overall.
I originally had it so there were enemies on the opposite side of the player that forced him to start running from the get-go (immediate panic), but I eventually cut them. In a level that was already fairly difficult, having enemies charging the player from the moment the level is loaded seemed too harsh.
On the subject of it's difficulty, I'm a little torn about that.
I generally don't like to be the kind of designer that tries to outsmart or overcome the player. This level is definitely a level designed to challenge and push players, and I suspect many will not be able to beat it easily, if at all. (I myself have only beaten it maybe 5 times...)
I think in this case it's acceptable largely given the game I made it for. Spelunky is a difficult game in general, and sometimes completing even level 1 of the original main game is difficult. Some of the custom levels that 'ship' with the game are far more cruel than my design.
Of course, I don't know how solidly I believe in that argument: I used to often make levels/tracks for Freetar and Frets on Fire (PC homebrew clones of Guitar Hero), and was constantly annoyed with the community of track-makers making largely only expert-level tracks. Most were only making tracks because they had already beaten every level of the original Guitar Hero games, and craved new challenges, so only expert-level tracks were being made. So, I suppose that's similar to me making the argument that it's okay to make a cruelly difficult level for Spelunky as the main game is already so challenging.
Labels: weekly game
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 5:09 PM
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