Danger Ducklings
Dev Info
Role: Level Designer, Game Producer
Company: MassDiGi
Software Used: Unity, Photoshop, Premiere Pro
Duration: June 2020-December 2020 | February 2022-June 2023
Game Info
Genre: Puzzle
Published on: Steam, IOS, Android
My Contributions
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Led the team from pre-production to post-launch support
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Created and vetted over 100 levels (Released 70)
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Assisted in the development of the level-creation tool
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Carefully crafted the development cycle of new world themes to be simple and easy to understand
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Thanks to careful planning, we achieved this and launched 2 additional worlds, post-launch
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Acted as our team's main QA tester
Level Design Process
During my time on Danger Ducklings, I found myself mentally noting which elements of design made a level fun or not. I worked on multiple guides for level creation, this being the final one I had a hand in developing. It includes documentation on both the act of designing levels and the theory behind what makes a Danger Ducklings level a worthwhile addition to the game.
Going in-depth on the design of a few levels
Introducing the main Mechanic:
Danger Ducklings is built on multitasking (Both ducks move in the same direction of the player's swipe). Because of this, we introduce the players to the game with a symmetrical level. I did not want to require any reading to understand this level, so the Ducks are both given 4 spaces at the bottom of the screen for the player to get used to their movement.
The intent here is that the player will notice a correlation between the duck's movement and their swipe direction. Once they have realized this, they should understand that walls and cones are safe to collide with, so that they can easily get the ducks to the checkered spaces.
A Level's flow:
The spikes are hazard tiles that neither duck can walk into. The challenge in this level is that the ducks have no bricks or cones to offset themselves on (they start together and need to be one space apart to get past the first row of spikes).
However, the Mud Tiles stop 1 duck from moving for one turn. This is how the player is expected to offset the ducks. First, they offset them by one tile, to get them through the first set of rebar. They then offset them by two to complete the level.
Before
No Detail too small:
This level remained like how it is pictured on the left for a long time during development. At some point, I realized it could fit its spot in the game as an earlier level by filling in a few spots in the top right corner with cones. Due to Danger Ducklings being built on a tile palette, it works as a great example of my level design philosophy; everything that is placed in the level, down to each individual tile, should have a reason behind it.
After
Level Reprises:
For some levels, we would take a previous level's general layout, and expand on it by including a different mechanic. For example, Reprise 1 has the same layout as Level 1; but now, one side is covered in spikes. Now, instead of the player being able to choose which duck to prioritize first, they must get the right one to the goal, and then the left.
As for the second reprise, an additional few rows of blocks near the top and the portal mechanic drastically change how players will be able to win.
Reprise 1
Reprise 2
Post-Launch Monetization Plan
After launching Danger Ducklings on mobile in 2020, our team began to look for different ways to monetize. After researching how top-performing puzzle games monetized in the past, I drafted this presentation as a point for us to move forward with.