Three Bulky Bears

Project Role

Level Designer / Social Media Manager

Game Description

Three Bulky Bears is a 2D level-based platformer where you control three bears who have been kicked out of their home by the witch Rolldilocks. You can switch between the three bears at the press of a button, changing how much your character weighs and how they control.

Level Design

I worked on 21 of the 50 levels in the game. My general goal with each level is to test the player's understanding of the bears' properties and how they can apply that knowledge to the unique level elements/obstacles of each world by creating various different scenarios that change how the player needs to apply that knowledge.

My process with designing the game's levels usually starts with taking one or more of the obstacles unique to (or introduced in) the world I'm making the level for, and then experimenting with the different ways the three bears can interact with these obstacles. Sometimes I find some really interesting interactions that I wouldn't have thought of otherwise. For example, I was working on a level for World 4: "Too Cold Mountain" with a hot and cold volcano theme, and I discovered that the bears can use the hot zones (which cause the player to overheat and get a game over if they're in there for too long) to build up heat that allows them to survive longer in the freezing cold water and vice versa.

My next step is to come up with a theme that I can focus the level and its challenges around. It's usually based on a specific aspect of the level element(s) and/or a certain mechanic that I want to explore. In World 3: "Too Hot Desert", I themed the level "Minecart Madness" around jumping in, out, on, and between multiple fast minecarts and designed the challenges around that. I created a section for that level where you had to jump out of the minecart and quickly complete an obstacle course before the minecart passes by the end of the obstacle course, needing to avoid touching the quicksand that can slow you down.

World 5 Level Design Example: "They're in the Walls"

With this level, I really wanted to craft challenges focused around jumping between different gravity zones (which change the direction of gravity in a specified area) in order to traverse a tricky environment in ways that would not be possible with normal gravity. For example, I really wanted to have a section where you climb a wall by jumping into a gravity zone directed towards the wall and rolling up that wall. Then you would have to jump into another gravity zone opposite the wall in order to continue ascending.

At first, I had trouble making the environment tricky to traverse without being unfair. I initially had this idea for a section near the beginning of the level with two parallel fast-paced obstacle courses with their own gravity zones that you would have to jump between by bouncing on mushrooms. However, I realized that when you'd switch between these gravity zones, the controls would adjust mid air to accommodate the new gravity direction in a way that made it difficult to reliably land precisely. My solution was to replace it with a much slower paced section, where part of the challenge was adjusting to the control changes when switching between multiple gravity directions. And in future fast-paced sections of the level, I arranged the gravity zones so that the adjustment in controls would feel natural when jumping between gravity directions.

One thing I try to be very conscious of while designing a level is its readability. It's important that the player is given enough visual information to know how and when they'll need to react to something. However, I did run into a readability issue with this level where playtesters found it hard to react fast enough to and avoid the protruding blocks of lava while falling down the corridor of lava in the level's final section. I solved this by shaping the corridor of lava so that it visibly bends in the direction the player will need to move in order to avoid hitting the lava.

Final Thoughts

This was my first larger game project and I feel like it was really good experience working with a larger team (13 people) after working in teams of three or four at most in previous projects. Because of the 50 total levels we set as a goal for the project, I had to make a lot of levels on a relatively consistent schedule and that really helped me strengthen my level design skills. I developed a better sense for how to make my levels more readable and achieving the right difficulty for a level without making it too easy or too difficult. A lot of this is thanks to playtester feedback revealing the flaws in my levels, allowing me to gain a better sense for avoiding those pitfalls over the course of development. There's a lot of levels in this game that I'm especially proud of (like the one I gave as an example) that I consider to be some of my best work.