Ignore the thread's title. I meant: Is the level design of my game which I'M NOT CURRENTLY PROGRAMMING and PROTOTYPING even considered a standard????

IMPORTANT!

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Read the important section highlighted in black below.

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My aim for my game is to be a really variated Castlevania SoTN/DOS-like adventure heavily centered on platformer levels and puzzles while also keeping gear and character customization akin to an rpg game. Also, my PRIMARY aim is for it to be [specifically] long and enjoyable.

In terms of levels, it has 143 total levels. Each level being around 2~4+ minutes in length.

It has 19 main worlds to explore and complete. Each has 2 ‘zones’, around 5-12 levels, repurposed as “sectors” of each zone, and each world may have an extra, totally optional sector.

Imagine sectors as levels, but they specifically work as parts of a 'zone', each consisting 3-5 sectors. Each sector is unique, and it has unique music too. It may have repeating aspects and gimmicks, but it is fashioned differently each time.

I have decided to split it in 2 parts:

• Part 1 has 9 worlds and 66 sectors. (World 9 only has 1 sector)
• …and Part 2 has 10 worlds and 77 sectors.

I thought of splitting it in half because i thought releasing all 19 worlds in one go would be too grueling for the players, because having to complete a game so long in one go would be really bad.

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Sometimes sectors have alternate paths considered entirely new levels.

Sectors are separated on time elapsed and time required to get all its special stuff:

• None (applies to special levels)
• Short (less than 2 minutes)
• Turbo (1-3 minutes)
• Fast (2-4 minutes)
• Regular (3-5 minutes)
• Slow (5+ minutes, these are somewhat rare)

There are 8 total playable charactesr each with its unique trait. These add somewhat replayability to the game.

The game is basically if Metroidvania games had a child with Kirby games but cheated with Sonic games and they had little Mario blood in their veins.

IMPORTANT:

I am a really amateur game designer. I am not aiming to be a designer for other games. I need help because this is the FIRST game I'm actually developing.

Sounds well thought, but ofc. we can't tell from that if your levels are boring to play or not.

What's most important to me personally is variety, I play game sonly for one reason: I want to see what new things come with the next level. So it should look different then the former. New scene elements eventually, but actually i'm already happy with another color theme.

Variety on gameplay is good too, and probably even more important.
Super Mario has a rich set of options here: Static levels vs. dynamic levels using moving platforms or skullrafts. Various enemy behaviors, and a very rich interaction model to interact with objects and NPCs.
I always thought HL2 is super innovative with the introduction of physics, but much later i found out Super Mario has done all of this long before. It enables creative and individual gameplay without any need to fake it using abstract RPG mechnics. It also enables puzzles, timing and rhythm sections, challenging combat and more, all in one game. It's perfect.

Regarding Metroidvania, it's rewarding to find shortcuts to minimize backtracking.
But this only works if the player can manage some mental model of the map, to make the advantage noticeable.
If i find a shortcut between section A and B, it is essential that there is a difference between those sections, otherwise i do not really notice my luck. That's where visual variety becomes essential to mechanics too, imo.
To complement what we can get from using different tilesets, we can use landmarks. Statues or devices, maybe just passive background stuff, but unique and easy to remember.

you can contact me, I'm famous game designer

Is your level design boring? No idea, haven't seen it.

Is your post boring? You bet. I'm sure all of these numbers are important to you, since they define the scope of your game, but they are boring to read and irrelevant to the question. There are games that are boring because they are too long and repetitive, but more often a boring game is boring right from the start. It's not the number of levels that matters, it's what's inside of them.

Catomax26 said:
Is the level design for my game too boring?

In terms of levels, it has 143 total levels. Each level being around 2~4+ minutes in length. …

That is not what “level design” is.

a light breeze said:
Is your level design boring? No idea, haven't seen it.

JoeJ said:
ofc. we can't tell from that if your levels are boring to play or not.

Exactly. What you've shared with us is just an outline of features. Level design involves how a playable level is mapped for challenge, along with what features will be included, and visual cues to help or challenge the player in that one level. EACH of your 143 levels will need to be individually designed for playability. How you make one level playable is level design, and it's specific for that one level.

Perhaps you just meant to ask us if the overall plan sounds boring? I think the overall plan sounds like it WILL be long (19 worlds, 8 player characters, all that) but we cannot tell you if Castlevania/SoTN/DOS/Metroidvania/Kirby/Sonic players would enjoy it enough to play it through once, much less multiple times as different player characters.

Tom Sloper said:
Perhaps you just meant to ask us if the overall plan sounds boring? I think the overall plan sounds like it WILL be long (19 worlds, 8 player characters, all that) but we cannot tell you if Castlevania/SoTN/DOS/Metroidvania/Kirby/Sonic players would enjoy it enough to play it through once, much less multiple times as different player characters.

That's specifically why i decided to split it in two parts. Its gameplay has many things to do with exploration, but not all levels are linear. You can freely skip from 4-1 to 4-3 and it will be no problem. There are also Warp Zones, which work as gameplay shorteners of sorts. I have decided that it's up to you if you want to keep exploring for extras and new stuff or just proceed to your goal and get to the end.

But, what really bugs me out is that the game has:

• Too many water-themed levels. I have chosen this because its GEOLOGICALLY correct game design. Thus it means, the water tiles and liquid system is gonna be kinda burned-off. [Note: The game is not water/sea-based. Just that it is placed in a watery region.
• The concept of a metroidvania with too many levels are a bit too niche and ambitious, thus meaning the player will quickly lose interest.

Still, i regard all the Metroidvania stuff as a way to customize your experience between all the sea of levels.

Characters have:

• Skins/Costumes (for visual customization)
• A wide variety of weapons (and some can only equip a specific type of weapon to encourage character usage)
• A level up system (which doesn't require much grinding fortunately)
• A skill tree that gets upgraded with each level up
• A money system used for purchasing goods
• Unique skills and movement

It's not the end of the world if i screw up some aspects of my game, but still, i'm asking for recommendations on what should i do.

It all comes down to execution.

Catomax26 said:
The concept of a metroidvania with too many levels are a bit too niche and ambitious, thus meaning the player will quickly lose interest.

This sounds you assume yourself that your levels are indeed (or will be) boring?

You also say levels can be just skipped over, which also implies individual levels are redundant and not very interesting, even just a chore.

So that smells like a design flaw to me.

You could implement a dependency graph to connect the levels.
E.g., to open a door in level 5, you need a keycard which can be found in levels 2, 4, and 11.
Players will memorize the locked door and other open problems, building up a mental model connecting all levels, giving the game depth and some mystery to unravel, ideally.

Character build / customization can do this too, e.g. if you need s certain skill to open a door / beat a boss, etc.
But mostly this does not help to mentally connect levels / locations of the world. Often all it gives is a form of self expression or choosing preferred playstyle, but rarely it helps to create a deeper, interesting world.

@joej i didn't mean that you can cakewalk and say “oops i stepped on 4-5 sorry Catomax26”. Of course i know what's this about. Indeed, it's actually so players don't have to complete it all obligatorily on one go.

I think too many levels are a weird twist to the game, but also it tells a lot about storytelling. This doesn't mean i would enjoy shortening each level to 1 minute and basically making it a bubblegum ball that serves as a bridge for ants to reach their food. To be honest, I'm losing my mind because my game has become a maze of ideas all revolving around if the game has too many stuff or is too long and saturated. Checked characters, checked lore, checked everything- IT ONLY FAILS IN LEVEL DESIGN!!!

I am only concerned about the amount of levels being necessary, because i don't want my game to remain in the same scenario EVERY time.

An idea of a world i have is a lake reservoir-dock that also has a reef. I think only leaving it in 2 backgrounds (being a lake and a reef) would be kinda boring. It also features an aquarium, a fountain, etc. Leaving these as simply decorations or alternate backgrounds feels underwhelming (also, the game is centered on an odyssey of slowly climbing up and destroying a mega-corporation). I chose that as a last-resort option because i'm honestly afraid if players are gonna bomb me for saying the game is too long. I also don't want to shorten it too much. The game is also very stage-based. Think of Castlevania: Harmony of Despair, except the levels aren't a huge grid with too many branching paths and a goal in the center.