Introduction
Sled is an atmospheric 3D action racing game about sliding down a snowy mountain. In this game, you are trying to reach the ending as fast as possible by dodging all the obstacles, flipping in the air, and landing at perfect smooth angles.
design goal
The purpose of this game is to beat your fastest time, in which replayability comes to be very important. My goal is to allow the game experience to be splendid even after the first time. I achieved this by giving players choices by making layers in the game: There are infinite possibilities you can reach the end down: through the vine and arch, slide on the ramp and hill, or up in the sky! My job is to sculpt the terrain and place the objects so that players feel like they got tricks up their sleeves.
The challenge I faced in making this level is to keep the player in place and the level consistent. While it is easy to make ramps or curves that give boosts and sends the player to the air, the versatility of the level makes the level unpredictable. In our early playtests, sometimes players get launched in the air so high they fly through half of the level due to high speed and several consecutive big curves. I solved this by adding obstacles and flattening areas in between big curves and areas after the player tends to fly to the super high to create this invisible boundary while still providing the player the excitement to slide high.
