My Role:

Level Designer

My primary job on the project was to playtest and redesign the existing levels and add new levels. The game has over 120 match levels, and I redesigned levels from scratch and reorganized levels to ensure levels had a solid pace and difficulty curve. Several levels were incomplete or had broken game logic, which I updated or remade entirely. When the game introduced new mechanics, I utilized a “Kishotenketsu" (Ki-Sho-Ten-Ketsu) philosophy, often seen in Mario games and popularized by Japanese game director Koichi Hayashida, where new mechanics are introduced in a safe environment, then repeated to teach players to master them, then subverting player’s expectations by putting a twist on it, before ending on a fun and satisfying conclusion. For example: Introducing the teleportation mechanic by mostly demonstrating it in a level that is hard to fail (Ki), repeating the mechanic in subsequent levels with an escalating difficulty curve (Sho), and then having a challenging level with teleports and the game’s Milkshake object (which has to fall to the bottom of the level to be collected) to put the player’s mastery to the test (Ten), and finally end on a playful and fun level at the end (Ketsu).