Cavern Depths

The first item needed to be a pretty basic one, just to get used to coding items, so I went with a pickaxe that can destroy specific parts of the level. Destroy in this case just means evaporate, because neither of us were 3D artists at this point, but I did know how to code, somewhat, so I built a system that lets you use items, and then an item that destroys anything breakable in front of the player when used.

Some more basic functionality needed to be added outside of that, like pressing a button to make something happen elsewhere; we didn't need to make a cutscene for it or anything, but a pressure plate that a big box could be pushed onto, or that the player could step onto themselves, was definitely both easy enough to implement, and would give us more freedom in making the levels, so I made those as well.

Considering the camera angle, we want our character to play with different elevations a bit, but just like in Captain Toad, the player can't jump, so I created ladders for the player to climb, and also, naturally, the unlockable item in this cavern had to be a hookshot, because those are awesome. Programming those was advised against, because physics are hard to code with, and while, yes, that did give me some troubles, like shooting the player into outer space in testing, after a bit of tweaking, I did get it to work, and it did wonders for our level design possibilities.

Before I jumped right into just making a level though, I first wanted to get a better understanding of how to create a level in 3D space, so I made a level in Minecraft, using its adventure mode and some command blocks to suit my needs. This wasn't so much a prototype for level design, but more for the concept itself; how to design for getting in and out of a cave using a resource obtained inside the cave. Back in high school I used to tinker with command blocks a decent bit, so the entire process of making this, playtesting it, and documenting the feedback only took about a day.

Since the 3D space I was working in is quite different from Minecraft, and the tools available weren't quite the same either, the level and the prototype only follow the same general line of action; there are points of no return, and that point forces the player to engage with the puzzle at hand and make their way towards the next area, and only once they've collected the treasure from in there, are they able to return to the surface.