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Level Design
I was responsible for designing the three levels in the game and making sure that the game progressed smoothly. Since the would just scroll on its own this mainly depended on when enemies spawned.
Hellbent is a 2D shoot 'em up bullet hell game.
Hellbent was made with new In-house 2D engine and with that new limitations. Since it would take a while for the team to get a playable game we as designers had a lot of time to design and pre-prod.
I was responsible for designing the three levels in the game and making sure that the game progressed smoothly. Since the would just scroll on its own this mainly depended on when enemies spawned.
The game had an extreme focus on enemies and one of my responsibilities was to create the waves of enemies the player would face. The goal was to create a nice pattern where the player could dance with the enemy’s bullets. It was hard to get difficulty right during development it tended to swing between very easy and very hard.
The game has three bosses that I designed, and I implemented two of the them. The last boss was implemented by programmers due to complexity. In the original design the bosses had a lot more unique and fun abilities but due to technical limitations they had to be simplified. In the final release the first two bosses use the systems as the normal enemies.
This project really helped me understand how difficult balancing can be and that in order to get it right you need a lot of iteration and playtest from a wide range of players.
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