Summary

Galaxy Raider is a space themed shoot em' up game that was developed by Studio Bang Bang during a 10 week period at The Game Assembly by 10 ambitious students.

In this game you as the player would be pitted against all odds fighting hordes of space pirates and aliens with the ultimate goal of acquiring a legendary artifact.

As a level designer my goal was to design and balance all game mechanics and how each and every level I created would play out while holding the scope tight because of the given timeframe.

Specifications

8 week school project (part time).
Team size: 10 (2 Level Designers, 5 Programmers, 3 Artists).
Created with Tiled Map Editor.
Features 10 intense action packed levels.

Level Design
Game Design
Story Design
Scripting
Balancing

My Contributions

The Planning Stage

Everything went extremely smooth after recieving the criteria needed to complete this project. We all had the same vision on how the game would look and play from day 1. This made it extremely easy to communicate with each other and plan what needed to be prioritized and what could wait. We had come up with a handfull of enemies that were not too hard to program and a list of player abilities that were easy to implement and fun to use. After all this, all that was needed was to create fun spaceship themed levels to follow through with the plan.

Using the sniper against a line of foes.

Gameplay & Story

In Galaxy Raider you play as the nameless protagonist who is given a mission to obtain a legendary artifact within an abandoned spaceship located somewhere within the deepest parts of The Outer Rim. While inside the spaceship you encounter hordes of space pirates and worm-like enemies and fight your way with the ultimate goal of acquiring the artifact of legends.

The gameplay is very straightforward in my opinion. You are sent out into your mission, and the goal is to get to the end of the level while killing or avoiding all your enemies. Kind of like a typical Super Mario level. The extra charms are your ability to dash forward or backward and your weapons which you can level up by killing enemies. Not to mention that leveled up weapons have the coolest attack animations.

Balancing Gameplay

Of course not everything usually goes as planned from the start. We ran into a few issues regarding enemies being to tough to weapons that didn't feel strong enough. But I believe that all problems can be fixed no matter how complex they may be. So after much testing and balancing I, together with my level design collegue, figured out the right balance in difficulty and player strength.

I would say we achieved quite a lot through the old trial and error method but after some time there would always be a better method that pops up. In the end, I'd say the only enemy that served to be a real pain was the "Razor Mech".

But I'll save the reasons for when the player find out for him/herself.

Ending Results

In all honesty this had to have been a project that I held so close to my heart. It was not only extremely fun to work with but it was also one of the many group projects where I felt true dedication. But I couldn't have done it without the help from my groupmates who pulled through and gave it their all towards the very end.

This was also my first time using the program Tiled and it helped me immensely when I started on the turn based strategy game afterwards. I've always had a special place in my heart for side scrollers and working on one really made it worth the while for me. Not to mention all the great experience I achieved while making levels for this game.