The basic movement is pretty simple and optimized for mobile. You can either swipe or tap. A tap makes you jump and a swipe switches the gravity direction.
In edit mode you can just push all of those blocks to the bottom so Sniffi can jump on top of them and cross the spiky traps. You can only move blocks vertically.
After you're done editing a level you just press play and see if you can make your solution work.
Here are some pages from my initial concept. I sent them to Melissa to see what she thought about it. After talking and thinking about it for a while we realized, that a simple endless runner like this was not what we wanted to create. We wanted to craft something more interesting so Melissa came up with the idea to allow players to edit the levels before playing them. I loved the idea.
The map gives you a sense of progression and makes you curious about what's coming up next. There are 4 worlds with 25 levels each. We wanted to make them as distinct and special as possible, because that prevents players from getting bored.
We had a small group of dedicated testers that played through the entire game when it was done. Here you can see some data we tracked from them including how long it took them to beat a specific level, how many attempts they needed to get all 3 stars and how often they had to edit the level.
Here is the average number of attempts it took our testers to beat every level. This helped so much with smoothing out the difficulty curve. It is way better now.
We also asked our testers to fill out these forms to get some more personal feedback from them.
After I placed the diamonds here it became much more intuitive when to jump.
This is another example where I used diamonds to guide the player through the level. I only did that when playtesting showed it was necessary.
Over time puzzles keep getting harder and harder. Diamonds stop telling you the solution. Instead you have to figure out how to reach them.
New elements are introduced to the player very regularly. On the image you can see speed boosters, which can be activated or deactivated in edit mode.
I made sure that I had enough tools at my disposal to create some interesting puzzles. Magnets pull Sniffi towards them if the player decided to activate them.
Every twelve levels there is a bonus level which is not about solving puzzles. Instead you can just turn your brain off and shoot robots. This provides a nice break and some variety.
The second world feels extremely different than the first one. It is creepy and dark.
Try to remember where the spiders were in edit mode, because they are moving towards that position.
Beware of the skeleton hands coming out of the ground. As with the spiders you better remember where they are in the edit mode.
Jump on a bat to ride it.
After the second wold, which felt very cold and silent, we wanted another strong contrast. This wold is hot, loud and energetic. Obviously puzzles get even harder: In this level you need to push the blocks exactly to this position. Then you need to run on them upside down to doge all of the fireballs.
You can bounce off from these jellyfishes, but don't touch their tentacles.
More and more elements are introduced. These arrows will switch gravity direction when Sniffi passes them. Usually you can't do that while you're airborne.
In the last world I really had to try hard to keep puzzles easy enough. These portals offer an insane amount of possibilities.
Once again you can't get past this obstacle by jumping. You need to push the blocks to this position and run upside down.
When you're in a bubble you slowly float towards the top. If you are upside down, you go in the other direction.
You need to block the shots of these canons to get past them.
To avoid an anticlimactic ending you get a nice boss fight in the shape of a bonus level.
I'm really happy I did this project with Melissa. As this was my first big game project, I gathered so much useful knowledge along the way. For example that you need to make levels way easier than you think, that playtesting is super important and that everything takes twice as long to create as you think. I kind of knew these things before, but I guess you have to experience them to fully understand what they mean.
