With the base-layout of my level complete and me being perfectly on time with my original weekly plan, I can now focus my time and energy into polishing up and tweaking what I already have to make it a more enjoyable experience, ready to write-up my final conclusion next week. To start off I removed a lot of unused assets from my game's content folder which were taking up unnecessary space, saving a fair few GBs of storage following good professional practises of optimising your game's speed and filesize (since the game is loading in various assets which aren't even being used). Next I played through my level in its entirety, starting from the right, moving to the middle section and ending with the left as I reached the floating garden at the end. This is the preferred route I'd like the player to go through in an ideal scenario to get the best experience from the game. However the level was still designed with freedom in mind, so to make sure it was well structured the game needed to be played through three separate times, with each playthrough starting in a different area (either going down the right, centre or left path).
This decision posed a problem for me though: because I'm the person who made the level it doesn't matter which order I play through it in, I know its layout like the back of my hand and am likely to learn very little about the game's mechanics. That where I came up with the idea to get three of my family members, who had no prior experience with the game but have all played games before, to each play the level. The catch is I'd instruct each of them to go down a different path first, and see how it impacts their experience. The results are below:
Person who went down the right path:
Found the level the easiest to playthrough compared to everyone else. It helps that you don't actually have to jump for this section, it just focuses on the player learning the game's movement options and bounce-pads. Because they didn't know you could even jump by the end of it they had trouble getting to the next area though.
Person who went down the middle path:
Struggled the most out of everyone. Combined with the area being dark, having the ghosts that kill you and the obscure bounce-pad, this experience set them up to always be on their toes for the rest of the level in fear of greater difficulty. Issue is, this part of the level was more of a twist, and differs greatly in mechanics and atmosphere to the rest of the stage.
Person who went down the left path:
Had a relatively good experience, they didn't want to leave the final garden for a long while though and were disappointed there was less of a reward for going down all the other paths since they enjoyed the nice atmosphere of it. Overall they didn't really struggle or find the game difficult from there, they did miss the moving platforms though and preferred them to the ghosts and bounce-pads as the main gimmicks of the other areas.
Overall though this feedback was very helpful, and there are a few changes which can be made because of it. A big issue that sprung up was because I'd put a bounce-pad in the middle path, it caused an issue with the person who went there first as they didn't understand the concept of it since it came out of nowhere. Fortunately the person who started at the left and then went to the middle picked up the idea very quickly, so it does depend on the person. To remedy this issue I tweaked the level slightly to make a small, empty room that looks like a dead-end, with the bounce-pad being the only thing placed in the middle of it, popped bang in the centre. This practically forces the player to use it, or at least want to walk on it, even if they have no prior knowledge of what it does. Plus, if they go down the centre path first, they'll already have an understanding of how it works for when they take the path on the right, which uses the bounce-pads as its main gimmick, slightly shifting them ahead of the competition.
I also removed the ? coins from the level entirely following feedback, which were previously used to mark secrets and hidden areas. These caused far too much confusion, and all three playtesters thought that you could pick up and collect them like a typical Mario or Sonic game. They caused more hassle than they were worth as they went against standard platforming conventions (as most platformers require you to collect floating, spinning coins, whereas here you can't). In the end removing these actual improved the game overall, as it means that the player now has to find the secrets themselves aiding the thrill of discovery and exploration of the level, without just mindlessly following a floating coin to the goal.
From here, I made a few other tweaks to the levels layout, since there were a couple of areas you could get stuck on, and an invisible wall that it was possible to land on top by mistake. It was also possible to get stuck in the body of water in the corner if somebody wanted to jump in, so I added a block inside so the player is able to jump on it to escape if they find themselves trapped. These last few changes have now brought the development of my level to its end, with the next and final week being dedicated to me writing up my conclusion and what I learned throughout the process!
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