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J. Cody Winchester
Game Designer
Professor Stretch
Platform
PC
Tools
Unity 3D Version 4.6
Adobe Illustrator CS6
Duration
~8 months
Overview
Professor Stretch's gameplay is that of a 2.5 D platformer, utilizing a stretchy arm to swing yourself around the game space in order to pick up your rambunctious students and bring them back to the school house rocket ship. My contribution to the game was largely level design, being assigned the lead level designer with two other designers to work with on level creation. I also worked on game system brainstorming and implementation working with designers and programmers to get functionality as fine-tuned as possible.
Pre-Production Phase
I joined the team after the pre-production phase, a four month development cycle focused on rapid prototpying iteration. The original team that created the prototype I had to work on was only four and the team size grew to twelve when I joined.
Level Design Analysis
Joining the team after the pre-production phase meant that there was a lot for me to learn about how the levels are made and how the player is able to navigate around said levels. I began with playing the game over and over, taking notes on the limits of the player and the construction of the level layout.
Here you can see how the project looked when I first came onboard. The level design was crafted in a very vertical centric method, which worked well with the high elasticity of the stretchy arm. However this made for very difficult gameplay, when we wanted to the game to be very accessible to a wide range of players. This meant that I had a lot of work to do with changing how the levels are crafted and adapting to the changing mechanics in terms of how the player is able to traverse the game space.
Deconstruction and
Conceptualization
This was the first task that I undertook down the long road in configuring the level creation methodology.I created a document to help visualize how the levels pieces are constructed and what sort of shapes have been used. The result was a jumbled mess of purposeless shapes that served no meaning in regards to how the player maneuvered throughout the space. I knew that I had to figure out a set number of level design pieces that would be used to create levels more effectively.
Coming up with a variety of shapes and objects to use in the construction of the level design, I began to craft a level that focused less on vertical movement. I wanted to focus to be on getting the player into a sense of flow, always having something to swing onto as well as different sort of environments to have to navigate. After the initial concept I began to expand upon the levels space, trying to encompass the entirety of the different challenges within a single space so that they could be quickly tested.
 Level Concept Initial |
|---|
 Level Concept Final |
 Level Block Out |
Building and Iterating
After testing my first level I found that I still had yet to push the horizontal gameplay more and was creating spaces that required too much vertical movement. I scraped the old level and went back to the drawing board, creating a new level that focused entirely on horizontal movement and giving the player the ability to get into a real sense of flow.
Pushing the horizontal gameplay with this level helped to form the feeling I wanted in all the games levels. Below here are the original levels that we blocked out and then their final versions, while not all of them made it to final build there are pieces that were able to be taken and utilized in the later created levels.
 Level Sketch Out |
|---|
 Block Out |
 First Art Pass |
 Final Build |
 Level 1 Block Out | Level 2 Block Out |  Level 3 Block Out |
|---|---|---|
 Level 4 Block Out |  Level 5 Block Out |  Level 1 Final Build |
Level 2 Final Build |  Level 3 Final Build |  Level 4 Final Build |
 Level 5 Final Build |  Level 6 Final Build |
Conclusion
Being the lead level designer on this team was a large responsibility and very rewarding. I was able to attend multiple after-hours play-testing sessions with groups of children from local schools as well as several troops from both Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts. This allowed us to form the levels in a manner that was tailored to a much wider player base, having it constantly tested by members of the Game Studio at Champlain College. It also gave us a perfect glimpse into out target audience of children, being able to see the wide grins and excitement on their faces. Seeing your work appreciated and
Teammates
Carlos Gutierrez - Designer
Nicholas Robison - Designer
Eric Pacelli - Programmer
Christopher McCooey - Programmer
JoyLee Flahive - Programmer
Shaun Davies - Artist
Adam Zemany - Artist
Jesse Snyder - Artist
Luke Douglas - Artist
William Harrison - Producer
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