Starchart was the most technical design challenge I had come across so far. The level involves a lot of connected system from the path generation to the map route display to the connected buttons. 

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System Design & Game Flow

I designed and iterated on a system that covered all these interconnected features with a flow chart. Gradually simplifying it as much as possible and helping break up the large workload into a priority order, in order to effectively playtest within our schedule.

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My original design was definitely overcomplicated, originally there were multiple types of platform shapes with different numbers of possible paths and rules. It created an extra element too much for players to take into consideration whilst moving around the level and trying to solve the route.

• I broke down the design to feature only a singular platform shape that had the potential to create paths in all the same directions.

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Changing Player Behaviour

A problem that came out of playtesting was a 'follow the leader' type behaviour. So I introduced the floating meteors to the round

• Broke apart players and make them keep an eye out on more than just the map

• Added a slapstick element that the level was missing