
My role in Ellen’s Adventure
Level Designer.
HIGHLIGHTS OF WHAT I WORKED IN
First Time Player Experience, Documentation, Whiteboxing.
The game
- Puzzle, Action Game.
- PC.
- Unity 3D.
- The spaceship captain Ellen wakes up in a strange enclosed environment. To get out she needs to solve all the puzzles.
PROJECT TIME
May 3 2021 – May 7 2021.
The goals
- Scaled use of challenges.
- Smooth first time player experience.
- Fast pace gameplay.
I planned for players to achieve a certain level of mastery in one kind of challenge before introducing them to a different kind of challenge. The previously mastered challenges will get reintroduced in scaled-up versions and revisit them in medium difficulty versions later on.
To let the player have a smooth learning experience, I limited the options on how to execute the challenges in the level. The level has clear indications of where to go so that the player can focus on completing challenges.
I planned so that the challenges in each room would take around 1-2 minutes to finish, which makes the overall gameplay fast-paced. When the player completes all the challenges in a room a green light activates and a door opens. For the player, it creates a sense of reward and positive feedback which will encourage them to finish upcoming rooms even when they progress in length and difficulty.

FLOWCHART OF PLAYER LEARNINGS


The gameplay video
- Mockups.
- Challenge progression.
- Gameplay.
When entering a room I will show the mockup before the finished product.
I will introduce all the challenges and their progression before the player performs them.
The recorded gameplay is my own footage and from playtesting.
My learnings
- Bigger space doesn’t equal higher difficulty.
- Player flow should have been playtested more.
I wanted the level to progress in difficulty but instead I added more playable area. I learned that difficulty doesn’t evolve on how far the player needs to go to finish it. I also focused on how it should look like more than how it should feel like. Next time I will focus on how to progress the challenges and not on where they should play out.
I didn’t have enough playtesting sessions, so my own expectation of the player route and performance stayed approximately the same. I got feedback on the player learnings during the mockup stage so some things was slightly improved. Next time I will have playtesters and feedback loops from early development all the way to the finished product to get a better overview of how players take on the level.