2D Mega Man Level V1

 The things that went right were:

• The concept of falling and being met with a different part of the level was made clear in the beginning of the level, so players knew what to expect.

• Players had fear of dying, but never actually did.

• There was no way to avoid the checkpoint or go past the end goal.

The things that went wrong:

• I had to learn how MegaMan worked as I made the level because I had no previous experience with the game.

• Players got stuck in one part of the level from a design flaw with the footholder.

• The level was very short.

• Some parts that were an option for the player to take were hard to get to.

• The second pickelman encounter was a bit too difficult, and players always fell into the quicksand instead of defeating pickelman.

Ways to improve:

• Make the level longer by adding more enemies are more areas to the map.

• Fix the design flaw of moving from one area to another that was blocked off by adding a ladder instead of a foot holder.

• Make the second encounter with pickelman easier to win if the player wished to.

• Make sure every area made for the player is accessible to the player.

• A lot of my level will be completely changed, but I will still keep the same or similar concepts.

The challenges presented worked overly well with the skill level of the players. None of the players died when playing the level, and the players grasped the concept quite easily. Even when the players fell off some platforms, they were given a bit of health instead of dying. Unfortunately, this made the level very easy. MegaMan, I have heard, is known for being difficult; if I were to create a MegaMan level that encompassed that, I would like to make it more challenging. I don’t want it to be too hard, but I do want it to better introduce the difficulty level of a regular MegaMan level since it is meant to be a tutorial level for MegaMan, not something else.

The critical path was very clear because there weren't many places that the player could go besides forward. There were, at most, two options on where the player could go at any time, and those two paths bottlenecked together to a checkpoint or the end. Players never felt like they had to backtrack in order to complete the level. I would like to add more options of ways to go, that way the player has a lot more options for different play types. Maybe some paths will have more enemies, while others will have more obstacles to jump around. Players will be able to pick one of the paths, and stick with it, maybe with the possibility of falling down to one of the other paths.

The overall flow of the game was relatively smooth until some players got stuck in a place with a foot holder. A footholder won’t change screens like a ladder will, which keeps the next part of the level from generating. This drastically broke the flow of the game because players had to restart the level in order to complete it. I would like to keep the flow of the level, but still increase the difficulty of the level. This will probably be done by adding more enemies, as well as more health pickups that would be decently proportionate to the expected amount of damage the player will receive at a given moment. I would also still like the flow of the game to not be broken by falling to you death, but rather keep the flow by falling into a different part of the level.