270 Mega Man Map 1 Version 2 Analysis

We each made a Megaman tutorial level for someone new to the series, my level was mostly that but I was blinded by my own gaming skill compared to a beginner and made the few levels towards the end a little too difficult. 

The playtests overall went pretty well with only a few issues. From most of the people that played it said that it was fun and that they would play again. Most people told me that they really liked my idea of this part of the level. 

They told me this because it teaches you how to fight a certain type of enemy. I laid out those enemies like that for the rest of the level, it worked really well. 

What didn't work, for the previous playtest we had to create difficulty, this playtest we had to implement changes suggested by others. The only problem is that difficulty is very subjective and I consider myself better than average so I may have made some of the ending rooms a little too hard for the beginner type player. The room that had the most controversy is this one.

This room had the most mixed view of like to dislike out of them all. Peoples biggest reason for the hate is that the miner's attacks are hard to avoid and he starts to attack right away, but people loved the layout of the room because you can avoid the miner's attacks, but even then it can be hard. 

One improvement I would want to make is about the length, it's only 8-9 rooms but each room takes a moment to get through. I want to add a better story to this because plenty of people questioned why my level went from western to ruins? I would say that the story was you chasing a band of bandits into a mining expedition and instead of riches they found a ruins type area. 

Most of the level was good progression, but I messed up on the ending sequence, like with this room. 

I made some enemies shoot at the player from the start, and on that second platform, they would get hit by shots instead of just avoiding them. 

When playing through the level, there was a pretty clear critical path that players went on. 

My overall flow of this level was with rooms that took time to go through, most of them had you going from top to bottom or bottom to top. 

My level was very linear with no real alternate paths to go on, this could mean a very boring level, but it depends on how you present these linear levels, and it seemed like others liked it as well. 

For every person that played my level, none of them asked me where to go, or got confused on any part, so my playtesters knew exactly where to go. 

I then interviewed Sam, one of my playtesters and asked him what I discussed above. 

What went right? 

The level has a good beginning portion to ease the player in, I felt like I knew how to fight some of the enemies after their first encounter. 

What went wrong? 

That ending was pretty challenging, but with some tuning that could be fixed, it also doesn't feel fully western. 

Were the challenges presented appropriately to the skill level of the player? 

I would say that the pacing is good all the way to the end, but like I said that ending needs to be tuned a little. 

Was it obvious where you were supposed to go? 

The only part that could be confusing in any capacity would be the pitfall into the next part of the level because not everybody likes friendly pits.