MA Games Design: Level Design Part 6

Yesterday I had a few people test the game in the lesson and the feedback I got was very positive. Everyone thought the sound cues for the boss worked well ''The sound and music to me was on point with the boss itself.'' (From Feedback)

There was a few things I missed though that I have now added into the game. Firstly left handed controls didn't even come into my mind originally but seeing a player having to use awkward movements to hit all the keys made it a necessity.

Next whilst watching I noticed a lot of the time players were getting hit (before the boss) frequently at 2 different situations; Long falling time with little air control so they can't avoid bullets and the basic planes that shoot a bullet targeted at the players location. I've solved the falling one by adding some linear forces to push the player down after a jump (Changing gravity wasn't an option because it wasn't using character movement inputs). For the second problem I have replaced all targeted planes with standard ones for this early level. I think because of the number of objects on the screen later in the level it made players stop noticing bullets coming from planes that had went past their current focus point, which is fine for standard planes but the targeted bullets can be fired out of the players focus so they can sneak up before they are noticed.

Finally onto the boss battle reactions. Everyone got to the boss on the 1st run through of the level, which is ideal since dying without ever getting to the main event on a first level doesn't give you the 'I wanna fight that again' feeling. However everyone got to the boss with 1 or 2 lives left, so on top of removing the main problems that were damaging players (Without them being able to react). I'm going to be adding a Repair Station before the boss that will hand out a few extra lives, for now it gives them for free but I might make the players use currency found in the level to pay for extra lives so it adds a little risk reward factor.

An extra note on the boss, one player had difficulty reading the weakspot. At the moment I'm putting this down to the dummy model hiding a lot of the weakspot, so in the final model I'll have it open more and a set of unique hit sounds for hitting the it.

This is what I came up with as a repair shop. Spent from 11pm to 10 am doing the whole thing but it was worth it, I plan on having a few different jokey signs so its random which one is in the level. Can anyone think of funny names for the signs?