Pitch
Delve deep into Mary's nightmares.
She needs your help to find her Teddy Bear which is the key to overcome the darkness of her dreams. But be careful, her soul can't spend too much time out of her body.
Explore the dark mansion of Mary's dreams. Run, dash and destroy walls with the powers of her soul. Open locked doors as you get deeper and deeper into her dreams and find the key to save Mary from her nightmares.
Goal of the game
This game was made during the LudumDare 48. The aim of the game is to guide Mary to the end of the level. Mary can't stay away from her body for too long, so you have to guide her from checkpoint to checkpoint fast enough so that she doesn't get lost in her nightmare. You will have to explore certain areas of the level to look for levers and open doors to move forward.
Mary will be able to unlock powers in her dream, a dash to move faster, a double jump to reach inaccessible areas and a shockwave to destroy some breakable walls. The player must therefore quickly make his way between each safe point of the levels.
What we decided to do
For this game jam we had to quickly come up with an idea on the theme "deeper and deeper". We decided to go with the theme of dreams, and nightmares with a lost little girl.
The player should guide her as deep as possible into her nightmares to help her find her teddy bear. With our body separation mechanic, we wanted the player to feel that they were going deeper and deeper and that they felt far from their bearings.
My role in this project
For this project, we were a group of five with two 2D artists, a programmer, a sound designer and me doing the level design.
To start with, I did some 2D level tests on paper. Then, once we had defined the camera and the character's movements and metrics. I started to test my paper level in the editor, then I made a lot of changes to get to the final level. The goal of the different rooms in the level was to make them big enough to lose the player and add stress to the game as he tried to find his way out. As the game is a platformer, I also played with the jump values to add some stressful passages where the player will have to be precise.
With hindsight I'm happy with the whole level design except for the very large room with lots of tiny blocks to jump and two levers on top. The room is too big and it's hard to jump on the small blocks, the level is too frustrating.
