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Level Design / Re: What are some tips for making difficult levels?
« on: April 07, 2024, 06:30:04 PM »
To further explain point 2:
Let's say you have 1 builder and 1 water pit in the only path to the exit with no other workarounds. The builder is 100% locked in that position and is therefore no mystery.
Having multiple possible routes where that 1 builder can really help you out on the other hand makes the choice unclear. Bonus points if the meaningful usage is even hard to spot in the first place (hidden in plain sight).
If this holds true for not only one but multiple skills (+ adding some unortodox trick usages) the level can quickly become a very hard nut to crack (if there are no glaring backroutes of course).
This is how I see difficulty too. When we look at a level and try to solve it we in our heads are performing some kind of Depth First Tree Search as we imagine the use of skills and combos in various locations in different orders. When we think down a branch but then we can see we have one builder left but require the height of two then we know this branch has probability to be a solution drops to zero so we move onto the next branch, maybe by tweaking elements of this branch, for example, can we walk up a bit of terrain for the extra height, if so, think down that branch, if not, move onto the next wholly different solution.
Essentially, a difficult level has on actual solution but a large enough possible solution tree that requires that you chase through the tree a fair way until you realise you have to move on to the next.
