2 Hour Challenge: Deadbolt Vampires

 Welcome back! Thanks for reading the previous posts about my levels, and if this is the first I hope you enjoy. Now getting to it Im going to skip a small amount of the preamble about deadbolt as this isnt the first post about this game (That would be the zombies level, I would suggest reading that over here because its got a good bit of coverage on game paly mechanics in game). 

This time I did go for a larger level, at least larger than the previous level, which came with its own ups and downs and in heighnsight I think it was more downs than ups. At least with my knowlege at the moment. I had the idea of a similar themeing as the first one with a club setting but one with more pedigree, its in control of two more prominent vampires that your tasked with eliminating however you see fit.

Lets go floor by floor, you start to the left, presented with an entrance that is gaurded by a pretty bad bouncer and a number of people waiting to get in. The main club floor has limited targets on it, most are genuenly just dancing and before the stairwell is a bartender thats been assigned to gaurd duty.

This is more or less just a room to wait in, the idea is if it was raining then it gives some protection from that, the decor is a bit lacking tbh but its not the most important area anyways. theres a knife, I mainly had the idea of it being basically a concealed carry sorta deal but turns out a free floating knife overlapping a person will just kill them! Good to know for the future I suppose. I didnt think of much of a better idea for the positioning for that knife other than to have a gap in the dnacers and toos it in there. Also added a flippable table to provide a dash of cover if needed, always felt slap dash to me sadly.

The big dance floor! supposed to be the area that you jump through when in the level but I somewhat messed up the landing on that one. has a balcony which mainly just provided unplanned enemies to hear the fire fight and join in. The big vamp to the right is the main obstacle with the gal just above him as backup. They are mostly there to make sure you can't just walk right in and you can make a dash of a show about it when you arrive.

This is the main entrance to the upper floors, those areas can only be accessed through here. The barkeep guard (taller fella with the red line coming off him) is patrolling here; to kill this type of enemy you need to shatter the bottle they are connected to once they die. This is about when I discovered that I did not give myself enough time with this project. There's about 2 of these guys in the level and their bottles are basically right next to them, the other guy has his on a thematically fitting shelf but this one I just put on the ground. The poor placement makes the supposed challenge of the enemies and their gimmick nonexistent, it's just an extra bullet. Additionally the stairwell is supposed to be an elevator, I half got it to work but only half so I went with the traditional stairwell instead. Another smaller issue I had but thought I should mention.

So moving to floor two, I wanted to make a small detailed hallway with some simple protections; not supposed to be the most dangerous regions on the map, more just a passage to the other zones. In that vein I added some paths from here to other regions in the level.

 The bathroom provides vent access to the two separate lady targets, one is ONLY accessible through here which I feel in hindsight was a poor choice but the other has at least two approaches. But focusing on this area, this is the second of the barkeeps, the bottle for them is on the couch, thematically appropriate but mechanically not a challenge. The vamp outside the bathroom probably won't notice you and the one in the bathroom doesn't have time to react, there's one chance to surprise the player and have them get caught in the form of the head alerting fella in the upper right section. They aren't the hardest to dodge but they might surprise someone! This spot is mainly at the crossroads, it's pretty and I think providing a moment to think and choose a path is beneficial because after this it doesn't slow down much.

Here is the last region of the map, even added a little guide dashed line for the vents. So, you can go up the stairs, easy access, take out the few dudes there and then the target: there's also a load of drugs to eliminate but that can be handled when you're not being shot at. The table and pool table are both cover so you can dodge behind those pretty easily or just pop in via the vent and mess some dudes up, looking back on it the stun you get from dropping a floor to the ground is much longer than I thought so I would probably put it closer to the ground in the future to not make you a sitting duck. A small note, the pool table also has the bottle of another barkeep that I somewhat forgot was here, he's a bit heartier than the normal vamps so he provides some challenge but I still think the bottle was a bit too easy to get.

I decided to break up the text a dash with a zoom in, so as the above picture shows there is a path to this region and as I stated earlier this is the only path. This combined with the hallway, the entrances and limited approach options make the whole level feel rather controlled in what paths you can choose, and I'm not in favor of that tbh. I realize looking back that I didn't have enough time to truly flesh this out and playtest, there was a LOT of enemy positioning that I messed with to try and get it all done in time and ended up with a level i'm not terribly proud of to be honest.

Regardless, one of the things I would do to change this would be to bring all the barkeep bottles to this area, the amount of time you have to handle them is far more than I thought as well as you can destroy the bottle before killing the vamps. I think thematically it would have been more interesting as well as the stress of being followed through the level by these next to unkillable guys and managing to put them down finally at the last assassination target would have been satisfying.

These are the backups for the different quests you have in the level, they show up every so often when something happens. They were mostly added to make sure the tension didn't get too low while playing, which from the sound of the review left for this level and my own experience; it seemed pretty consistent. Additionally they work as markers for progression in the level and make sure the player can't escape the facility too easily. I wish I could have gotten the little balcony in the last spot to be a sniping position, I think you might be able to manage it but I could have implemented the idea a bit better for it.

In the end for the level, Im not the happiest with what I managed, I feel the first level ended up better mechanically and layout but this one seems to have a better over all aestetic coverage. I do think my focuse on aestetics is causing me to loose much needed testing and brey-boxing time. So moving forward a bit from my own thopughts, heres a review for my level that someone kindly left (the same someone from last week to, thanks bud!):

This fella really knows what makes a good level in this game, Pretty much agrees with everything they say, even mentioned a couple things they said early on in this post. The amount of weapons was not as intended on my end but good to hear that it was just enough; removing the shotgun at the entrance would probably have made that balance a bit tighter but in a good way. Feeling railroaded was a sad reality to the level but good to hear it was still fun.The technical note at the end is actually SUPER useful, I was doing doors completely wrong and didn't even think about the height of the vamps when placing things so going forward I'll keep an eye out for that. Thanks again for playing.

So with all that said I've completed the second of three of the levels I plan for Deadbolt. The third is going to have more time dedicated to it, I'm going to aim to make mechanics first over the prettiness of the level, and honestly I think I'll give some good hard thought into looking back and trying to re-master these levels. I do enjoy the editor and think the first level was great but not without its faults, this one was more faulty but not without its great moments. Here's to improving and future projects!