Level Mapping, 4th-8th

In the Smithsonian’s Advanced Video Game Design Camp, the students create platform style games. Platform games have simulated gravity and ours use scrolling cameras, so the level design is more complicated. Students learn a variety of ways to move through a level with boosters, transporters, keys, doors, portals, jumps, and falls. On the first day, I have them play a variety of retro platform games to gain a sense of level design possibilities and provide a concrete base to discuss how these game objects interact. Then they build fantasy level maps before we do it in Game Maker.