Hello, I’m Rob, the programmer from UpperRoom Games, and I’m here to pull the curtain back a little on how we make levels in Wavey The Rocket, a game we’ve been making for a few years now.
To start, we decide which of the themes we want to make our new level in, so for this, I’m going to show you the Tombs theme and make a super short segment of a level. A theme in Wavey will dictate the obstacles used as well as the difficulty. We start the level by copying from a level template that contains the generic start and end for all levels. Usually Wavey spawns from a portal in a safe space at the far left of the level and travels right toward to finish.
We can quickly at this point make the level feel a bit more like our target theme by modifying the lighting and putting in a temporary background. Custom backgrounds are added at the end.
Now we’re “in” the level, we need some obstacles for Wavey to overcome, and in Wavey The Rocket these come in all shapes and sizes. Spikes, walls, traps, snakes, and rocket munching contraptions are just some of the objects we can play with!
Now we need to place a few collectables, some easy and some tricky, this gives the player a reason to take the route they’ll take. A player who likes more of a challenge might try for the Gem where as someone who wants to learn the level and come back later might take the easier route and opt for the Whirls. When designing a sequence of obstacles we think about how we want the player to move. We may want to force the player to go back on themselves, to speed up or to wait for an opportune time.
There’s a lot more that goes into making our levels, but we don’t want to give all the super juicy secrets away! We’ll be doing some more behind the scenes post, so make sure to come check them out, and if you want, you can even Wishlist our game on Steam!
Until next time!
Rob from UpperRoom Games.