Sonic Minus - level designers, composers, and sprite artists needed

The level design looks pretty solid from what I've seen, but it's hard to truly judge levels without playing them. When are you planning to release a playable version?

 

You mean the video? I don't see a download link

 

I gotta say, the new music and skippable credits have definitely improved the experience. The boss is pretty neat too

A few improvements I would like to see:
- add a way to quickly restart the entire level, you could just add a button in the pause screen
- pause the music while the extra life jingle is playing
- this is just my opinion, but I feel like the timing on the crumbling blocks is a bit too tight, you don't really have any time to react

 

I really like Sonic's sprite set in this game, it's really well-animated and remarkably faithful to the original trilogy's Japanese box art. I like these sprites better than the Mania sprites, which just didn't look like the right shade of blue and didn't have good hands. Very nice!

 

I feel like the alignment for those walking sprites could be better cleaned up. They move around a bit too much.

Also, not sure if those graphics for the Vibrant Valley are complete, but I hope you also have a background artist as well. Sea and clouds looping throughout the entire stage map with no vertical movement doesn't sound good.

Finally, the level design here is pretty OK- I like how you leave enemies out of the speedy segments and leave them for platforming, a thing that even official Sonic devs didn't get right back in the day. Solid enough, but if you were to really make it more memorable, then...

1. you should try changing up the structure a bit. One thing all the best 2D Sonic games do to differentiate their levels are changes in the structures, loops, and general flow in order to make them stand out even amongst the level design. For a green zone, try giving the chunks of levels slightly (but not too much) erratic movement in order to better sell the natural look. Straight lines for level chunks works in a more mechanical area, but not in a green wonderland.

2. Add some gimmicks! Come up with some fun gameplay concepts on some spare time and try programming it in. It makes a world of difference and gives your level something fun to be remembered by. Even something as simple as like, say. the swirling tunnels in Sunrise Gate. More interesting examples can be the weird goop that changes properties and color when injected with a serum in Mania Chemical Plant Act 2.

3. As kind of an addendum to the last point, more new enemy designs for the levels would be a good start. Granted, I'm putting this last because I think this would require more of a general character/design artist and you only have a tile artist so far for this project- this isn't something you'll be able to do without more assistance. But if you get another character artist who can work on enemies, it would be great if you could add some more.

Just some honest criticism from what I see from these videos. I hope the best for you & your project man. I could try contributing *some* music when I get more experienced with FM, heheh. Lazy bastard though, so don't hold me to it

 

I would disagree with the poster before me about the level design. Whether I'm right or not depends mostly on your preferences, but I'll give my impressions based on the video:

• I'd say quite the opposite -- the level needs more enemies, hazards and stuff that makes you stop. As it is, it feels quite barren, at least the sections the video covers. The problem with that is that it may look good on video to speed through some sections, but ultimately it's boring to play because your attention has nowhere to go. Enemies, at the very least, reset your attention -- which is why Sonic devs absolutely knew what they were doing when they placed enemies in what otherwise would be "speedy" sections. The crux behind all of this is that the best person to tell which sections are speedy is the player, not you.
• Similarly, because tension is pretty low all throughout, any kind of reward may feel pointless to take. Since they generally appear where you are, but after you got there, they may not feel like much more than happy accidents that aren't even that happy because there isn't a particular problem they solve. I'm talking about stuff like this:

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You'll notice you can't actually see the coin monitor anywhere and only sheer curiosity will ever take you there if you're not the person who knows it's there from the beginning. Which is fine, because the feeling of serendipity definitely has a place, but since dying has little function in your game (as you're using the coin system) finding something like this by accident doesn't do much. You can always move this monitor somewhere the player can see from below already, driving the player's interest. Which is something you actually do in this counter-example:
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And I love it. The level needs more of this, because it makes the level feel more alive by constantly throwing your attention elsewhere, making you wonder what's going on wherever you're not. This example is actually really nice, and something that Mania does a bit way too often for my tastes, that is teasing you with this kind of item only to throw you somewhere else. Right above this spring there'll be another spring that completely gets you out of this section, and if you really want that shield and that coin you'll have to make your way back. Now the trick is, in order to make the player really want that shield and that coin, the level needs to be more dangerous, or at least more broadly so.
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• I agree with @64bitmodels about the terrain though. This level design guide is fairly old, but it may serve you well because it talks about exactly that. You have a few types of terrain, but they behave more or less the same here. By making the bridge-type terrain and the rocky-type terrain work differently (one has slopes and a wavy quality to it, the other is flat and horizontal -- for example) you'll create a language that lets the player know what to expect, so they anticipate what'll happen ahead by the way a certain platform looks. That's very valuable!

 

This is a fair point, I'm just of the opinion that there are less harmful and noisy ways to get the player's attention back when mindlessly speeding through sections- like as you said, putting items in mysterious or unspecified areas in order to motivate exploration (which is what I got from the latter half of your post).

Mania did this quite well in some sections of Flying Battery where if you sped past without paying attention, you'd miss out on taking top routes or rooms that are faster/have more rewards- Sonic Unleashed/Generations too, a lot of the fastest sections in the levels can be easily skipped over if players don't have good knowledge of the terrain. People really dislike having their momentum and flow being interrupted by a loud noise (a big criticism of the Genesis titles), and many sonic enemies (especially after Sonic 1) are the types that are difficult to be defeated at high velocity with a low reaction time- think the Shellcracker from Metropolis with its ridiculous hitboxes, or the Coconuts enemies from Emerald Hill where jumping at them without paying attention just leads to a coconut in the face.

Nudging them to pay more attention via rewards in the level design for doing so rather than punishments would help people like the game more, I think.
We can both agree the level design's pretty barren though, I just think it should be fleshed out with better art (graphics go a long way for masking level design) and more interesting stage hazards/gimmicks. If nothing else, the player should feel like they made a genuine mistake and not that they got unfairly fucked over.

On the contrary, why would the player want to experiment and explore if the level feels like a death trap? Any route would feel daunting, but if you're going somewhere off the beaten path that you haven't memorized you'd likely be a bit more wary. It might be considered not worth it to spend extra time going through uncharted territory for a shield the player might not hold for long. Not to mention, this is the first level in the game as shown by the previous Zone lists. Players should be able to take it easy.