Magic Missilers
Level Designer | Team of 2 | Summer 2023 - Fall 2023
Magic Missilers is a 2D turn-based arena spell slinger, designed to be played with between 2-4 people. This was a project over the summer of 2023 with one other person, and I worked on it as both a level designer and systems designer.
This project came about as a passion project between a friend and myself who really wanted to make a 2D arena fighter similar to games like Worms or Arcanists, which we used as our inspiration. During an open ended studio class, I decided to make Magic Missilers more than just a passion project, and began developing it for the class over the course of 2 months. My partner and I had weekly in-person meetings and work sessions to stay on course, ensure we knew what our goals were, and to ensure that overall the game was improving and not remaining stagnant.
As a developer on this project, my responsibilities included:
- UI & main menu design
- Level design
- Systems design
- Programming/implementation of new mechanics
Game Summary
Magic Missilers is a 2D turn-based arena spell slinger, designed to be played with between 2-4 people. Take turns maneuvering around the arena, positioning yourself to destroy the other players with your arsenal of magic!
Existing spells include fireballs to attack, and both rock slabs and mud-balls to create platforms and barriers for defense.
Technical
Magic Missilers was developed using Gamemaker Studio, making use of Git version control to manage the project. In terms of agile practices, while we did have weekly in-person meetings and frequent virtual communication, the setting for working on this project was much more casual.
My role
As one of two developers on this project, there was a lot of rolls to fill if we wanted to have everything in build that we needed. I was immediately all over the design aspects, the level creation, documentation of spells and abilities, and core system creation. Some things I struggled with at first were the implementation of mechanics, which required more in-depth technical knowledge. I learned a lot because of this, and through trial and error, was able to implement several mechanics into the game.
I had a few approaches to level design for this game. I wanted to create level architecture that provided strategic locations, but wanted to prevent these locations from being overpowered. There are a few ways I solved this. The most defensive locations in each map also happen to be the most difficult locations to attack from in the game, forcing the player to make a bit of a choice on whether they want to attack or defend. I further allowed for strategic thinking and action by making the decision to remove the roof from 2 of the 3 levels. This simple change allows players to use gravity in the game, arcing their spells up into the sky so that they can crash down on their enemies without a direct line of sight.