After I come up with the different names for my levels, I went straight into designing them.
The Initial Idea
The first design is something like this (see left image). The main concept of this is to use water as a tool (the character cannot touch the water because they don't know how to swim), in this level, the players need to find the gear to let the water flow into the larger half sphere at the bottom, as a result, they can see the platforms below water level. At the same time, the use of light is important, I planned to have the stars hidden inside the smallest half-sphere in the centre area so that the players will see the light coming from that area.
However, when I tried to develop this level further, I suddenly find out that if I design all my levels this way, then there will hardly have any relations between each level. After realising this problem, I decided to restart designing my levels from the beginning.
After Rethinking
I went back to my story, and start to figure out how can my levels somehow show relationships with each other. To show a process in my levels, I come up with the idea that I can make the basic shapes for each level based on my main character Molly's inner mind. From her broken heart (many pieces of the heart), to a state where hearts are merging and finally to a cured stage. As a result, it's better to have these 3 levels and then I come out with these rough-level plans (see image below).
Level 1 - The Broken Heart
At this early stage, when Molly is suffering from DID, her inner world is like a huge mess. From this starting point, together with the design of individual cubes, I decided to have these 4 items, spiral (there are 2 ways to go, but if you choose the wrong way, you will never get out of the spiral), string (inspired by the ball of yarn, easy to get lost), staircase (the staircase shows too many ways to go and much easier to get lost) and dice (6 sides with numbers, when they are inside one scene, it can give the players a feeling of a mess). The level rough plan is shown below. In general, players may use different personalities to go through Molly's messy inner world.
Navigation in Level 1:
The start point and the finish point will have light to navigate. Also in the first individual cube (the spiral world), when the player is controlling Bella, it will be easy to see there is a strong light coming from behind (as I will place the player facing downwards the spiral) and understand they need to change the direction.
Level 2 - Out of Order
After going through her deep inner world of Molly's and collecting the hope of stars from her heart, players now will enter the second form, where Molly's inner world is merging. As this form is all about the different scales of space arranged together, I quickly come up with the idea that the players can switch into different sizes to let the personalities fit with the spaces. The level plan is shown below.
From these floor plans, it is clear that there are 3 sizes of cubes so the players can also switch the size of the personalities to small, normal and large.
Navigation in Level 2:
For this level, I plan to navigate players by positioning one of the stars on the smallest moving platform (moving platform 2). As a result, when they first enter this level, they will see the star shining at that position and know they will need to get on to that platform. Once they get on, this platform will take them to the roof area where the plot of Wendy comes out and where the finish point is.
Level 3 - The Maze
This level will look more unified compared to the other 2 levels as at this stage, Molly is nearly cured. 3 layers with vertical moving platforms are designed. Within this level, I also considered some height differences which can let the player see something before they arrive at some points. The level plan is shown below.
The designed height differences are shown below.
Navigation in Level 3:
As talked before, navigation at this level will be implemented by the different heights. By designing like this, for instance, if the player is controlling Bella, he sees black monsters a few steps away, and he will have the time to switch to Wendy and beat the monsters. These lifted walls can make the players get ready for the upcoming events and avoid situations where the personalities suddenly touch the monsters and go away and players feel unexpected.
Conclusion on Designing Levels
In the beginning, when I was struggling with the ideas of my levels, I went to search online and found a Youtube video about tips on level design. That person said the first thing is to come up with the name of the levels. There is a sentence he said that made me impressive, which is 'if one person is going to talk to his friend about this level and if there is nothing special and no feature in the level, how can he describe this level to make his friend locate to this level quickly?'
As a result, for my future designs, if I have nothing in my mind, I will try to start with the name and use the names to get more inspiration.
The second is about navigation design. You can't just assume the player knows where to go and what to do after they are put inside the levels. Even in open-world games, there are many landmarks to guide the players. Also using light is another easy and convenient method to navigate the players.
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