Cardinal Escape
A mini metroidvania where players find and master four super abilities to escape a space ship controlled by an anthropomorphic cardinal and his robot minions.​
Concept
The original concept was to create a Metroidvania with the space-themed asset pack. Players would unlock different challenges in various parts of a spaceship, based on permanent abilities they collected.
To ensure responsive control, I reprogrammed parts of the character controller to include variable jump height, fast falling, and air resistance.
I brainstormed many ideas for potential abilities but chose four that could be combined in interesting ways.
Because there were four abilities, I decided to assign each to a cardinal direction and mapped them to the keyboard like a diegetic space control panel. The cardinal directions became a recurring motif.
Abilities
To narrow the list of abilities, I considered possible obstacles that players may encounter and how an ability could be used to overcome them.
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For example, players can jump on the heads of enemies to defeat them, but what happens when an enemy is in a hall so narrow there's not enough room to jump? This became the Volt Surge ability, a horizontal attack.
I used simple in-game scenarios such as this one to choose abilities that players would have in their arsenal to overcome the combinations of challenges discussed later.
The abilities pictured in the video include:
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Quantum Leap: double jump
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Plasma Barrier: temporary invincibility shield
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Volt Surge: horizontal attack
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Anti-G: temporarily swap gravity
Boss Fight
I initially created a side-scrolling test level as a way to determine the hypothetical ability combinations before I committed to designing a Metroidvania world. This test level eventually became the grand finale of the game after players unlock all of the abilities.
Early on, I had the idea of a cardinal bird final boss or primary enemy of the game and decided this side scrolling section could include this mech bird chasing the player.
Through all my testing, I was easily able to beat this section. However, after playtesting, I realized it was much more difficult than I thought. I tweaked all the jumps to be easier, while maintaining all ability combination challenges which were the real spirit of the section.
Despite this, it was still a difficult part of the game, so to avoid some of the frustration I heard from playtesting, I created a progression track that showed players how far along they were after they died.
Level Design Iteration
At the start of the process, my overall goal was to create a cross-shaped spaceship map, where each direction would correspond to an ability that players would unlock in this section.
On the first pass, I noticed playtesters had a lack of direction and confusion in sections, like repeatedly trying to go to a place where it was supposed to be obvious they could not go without certain abilities.
To give more purpose to the sections, I created a diagram with all possible combinations of abilities and designed in-game challenges that would require a combination of those abilities.
I designed of each section show the player the use case of the ability they were about to unlock. For example, the Mech Maze was full of enemies in tight hallways that are difficult to defeat without the Volt Surge ability.
On the second pass, I leaned into the themes and shortened the sections. Through the layout of the level, I made it impossible to access the checkpoints within the sections, unless they were completable with the current abilities.
Level Design
Players had an easier time navigating after the second pass and inclusion of the mini-map.
A late addition to the level design was optional coins that often showed off an interesting use case for a new ability or combination of abilities. They filled out the levels and provided optional challenges.
The sections pictured in the video include:
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Hover Hanger: Vertical section with floating enemies that inhibit players' jumps
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Mech Maze: Tight hallways and backtracking that require approaching and patrolling enemies from multiple directions
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Chemical Chamber: Floating acid platforms and columns of acid that inhibit movement. Includes multiple paths depending on which prior abilities have been unlocked
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Levitation Lab: Final, most difficult section and only completable once all other abilities are unlocked