Gameplay and Interactivity: Level Design

My aim with the background design was to create something visually beautiful in the vein of Dreamworks concept art, but not have it obscure the main characters and platforms. With a game moving as swiftly as Momentum, it was imperative that the background never detracted from what the player was trying to achieve.

The plan was initially to stick to one background and keep the palette very cool in order to allow the characters to 'pop' on screen. This was a joy to paint and allowed me to push my skills in a direction I'm not normally comfortable with.  We ended up making some of the trees interactive in various builds of the game to give the illusion of depth.

Dan added snow particles into the first few builds of the game but it caused the frame rate to stutter, which flew in the face of the very concept of our game. We couldn't afford the player to suffer any lag, so although it added another element of immersion we had to drop it.

I built the levels to be modular so that we could rebuild and repurpose levels on the fly. This meant less man hours if we were to push the game further along after completion of the assignment.

It was also very easy to add ambient lighting and change levels and hue's to create alternate levels. Our initial idea was to have the seasons and colours shift as the player progressed through the game but this ended up being a tad over ambitious. Below is an example of what I had in mind.