Ascension Escape the Well
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Party Platformer
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2019
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Unity
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Team of 2
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Level Designer
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1st Place in Spring TAGD 2019 Game Jam
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Design short intense levels with dramatic arcs
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Account for multiplayer interaction and varying skill levels
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Play Ascension : Escape The Well at https://marcor.itch.io/ascension
Overview
Escape the Well is a project for a semester long game jam with Texas Aggie Game Developers, a local IGDA chapter. I am continually surprised and honored that it won 1st place in all categories.
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Escape the Well is a multiplayer party platformer where players race against each other to reach the top of the level first, or attempt to be the last man standing by hitting others into traps or into the constantly rising water.
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Inspired by games like Tower Fall Ascension, Ultimate Chicken Horse, and Super Smash Bros, Escape the Well focuses on game feel from juicy effects and responsive controls and on bursts of intense, dramatic multiplayer chaos.
Responsibilites
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Level Designer
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Short levels with a dramatic arc
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Account for multiplayer interaction
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Artist
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Player animation
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Environmental assets
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Support game feel through art and animation
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Audio
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Compose music​
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Support game feel with SFX
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Team
Marco Ravelo
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Project Lead
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Programming
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Mechanics design
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Hardworking and passionate, programming wizard. Probably the main reason we won first. Fella Ag and also a cool dude. Check out his work by clicking his name.
Postmoterm
While I believe Marco and I did and excellent job with Ascension : Escape the Well, I am a little surprised we won. Not only was everyone's games at the jam also very good, but Marco and I didn't even implement everything we had planned! For example, in our original vision attacking a player would send them flying in a direction, so players could make creative use of the levels by launch other players into traps. That was cut, along with traps!
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As my first "long term" video game project with a hard deadline, I learned a lot about managing time, compromising over-ambitious features, and generally what to expect from a full game project. As my first platformer, I learned a lot about platformer level design. Some I learned from my successes such as offering various paths for varying skills levels. Others I learned from my failings, such as failing to provide enough chokepoints to encourage player interaction and allow lagging characters to catch up.