Medical Mayhem
A fast-paced 2.5D platformer focused on movement mastery, projectile avoidance, and progressive challenge introduction.
Project overview
Medical Mayhem is a fast-paced 2.5D platformer designed around movement mastery, environmental hazards, and progressively introducing new gameplay mechanics. The project focused on teaching players increasingly complex challenges while maintaining a smooth difficulty curve through iterative design and extensive playtesting.
My primary responsibility was designing levels, structuring challenge progression, analyzing player behavior, and iterating on the experience based on qualitative feedback gathered during multiple playtest sessions.
I designed levels 3, 5, and 8
Core Design Pillars
Teach Before Testing
Players should learn a mechanic safely before being challenged by it.
Maintain Flow
Movement should feel continuous and rewarding.
Progressive Complexity
Challenges build upon previously learned skills.
Readable Threats
Players should understand why they failed and how to improve.
Core loop
Traverse
Collect keys
Unlock
Repeat
Sketches
Level 3 concept and implementation
Level 3 concept vs final
Designed as the easiest of my three levels, Level 3 combines platform traversal and projectile avoidance with multiple paths through the layout. The comparison shows how the planned platforms, threats, and collectibles translated into the playable level.
Level 5 concept and implementation
Level 5 increases the intended difficulty while retaining multiple paths through the environment. The layout combines platform traversal, projectile threats, and jump power-ups, giving players different routes to reach collectibles and progress.
Level 8 concept and implementation
Level 8 was designed as the hardest of my three levels, bringing platform traversal and projectile avoidance together in a more demanding layout. Multiple paths give players choices about how to navigate the challenges and reach collectibles.
Level Design Process
I designed levels 3, 5, and 8 around an easy, medium, and hard difficulty progression. Each layout offers multiple paths, combining platform traversal, collectible placement, and projectile avoidance.
Level 3 Layout
This sketch shows the planned placement of platforms, collectibles, doors, and projectile threats in Level 3. Multiple paths give players choices about how to navigate the level, while the annotations distinguish standard and homing projectile behaviors.
Project outcome
Medical Mayhem was successfully delivered with a cohesive set of levels across the team. My main challenge was creating distinct difficulty levels while aligning my layouts, pacing, and design decisions with the other level designers, ensuring the experience felt consistent from level to level.
- 3
Levels
DELIVERED