Introduction

Kirbys Inferno is a classic platformer game. The game was made in C++ and Levels edited in Tiled. The player will need to finish 3 levels with a unique character features and a unique storytelling.

Working as a game and Level Designer

A platformer-game is somewhat a dream for a Level Designer to work on, and this project started in this way. I was hyped about creating childhood memories from Mario/Sonic/Castlevania and present memories from Shovel Knight and put my design thinking into a platformer. 

Our design started by creating LDDs and other design-documents where we clarified the design of the character. We wanted to create a multipurpose character where we had three different states. So we started out by designing the character and some environment that would fit and challenge the player.

Kirbys Inferno was a hard game and challenging game to design. In our group we had problem with illness from the whole group and it made it hard for the designers to test and get out the full potential from the design. It was not until the last sprint that we could play-test all the levels and environment.

The Level design was simple in the end though, not many puzzles, even though this we had some challenging parts. It was a good cooperation between me and the other Level designer, the last half of the project we swtiched around just to get the project finished and I started doing environmental design only. 

Environmental design/art 

Since our group had some issues with illness we had low attendance. Due to this, we had to make some drastic changes in the group to finish the project. With this in mind, I and my Level design colleague split our work and both worked on all levels but he was doing most of the design changes and I did all the environment and enemy placement.

This was my choice, I wanted our group to have a good project and I wanted to learn more about environmental design. It was tough to get it together nicely, to help and collaborate with everyone was hard to even though we had a really hard-working group the last weeks.

Closing Thoughts

Kirbys Inferno was, in the end, a fun and good looking game. We had a tough start and it was not until the last 3 weeks that we as a group got everything together and managed to get the game to working and play-testing etc. 

The game had some issues concerning being too slow according to play-testers and I totally agree. If I had the possibility to redo the platformer I would remove one level and remove one player-state to make the flow more simple. The story was really fun though and we had some voice-acting from our group and it made the levels better and I learned much from this project how to change things after certain circumstances and that you sometimes have to change things to finish a project.