Recently I undertook the challenge of crafting a level for one of my all-time favorite RPGs, Super Mario RPG. Because I love all of the levels that already exist in the game, I decided to undertake the challenge of creating a bonus stage for the game, since the game doesn’t really have any bonus levels. There are secret boss fights in the game, but not any secret levels.
With that challenge in mind, I immediately began the design process by brainstorming a list of interesting ideas for bonus levels, thinking of both theming and specific locations:
One thing that I found to be particularly interesting is that I found my own location and environment to be a useful source of inspiration. The idea of an 8-bit land came when I was walking through the halls of my graduate university. One the fifth floor of our building we have walls decorated to look like the original Super Mario Bros., and I was daydreaming one day thinking about how cool it would be to live and play in the world of the original super Mario Bros. That daydreaming is what ultimately lead me to the 8-bit world idea for the bonus stage. I would ultimately choose a different concept to go with for this project, but it was still interesting to see how the physical walls around me provided a source of inspiration.
What I ultimately decided to go with is a Rainbow Road themed amusement park. I came up with the Rainbow Road idea while watching a Youtube video about the history of Mario Kart that discusses the franchises popular tracks. The author of the video was talking about how they adapted the stage was adapted successfully as a fighting stage for Super Smash Bros for 3DS, and I immediately had the thought, “Could this work for my project? What would a Rainbow Road RPG stage look like?”
Early on I was really interested in the idea of an amusement park, because I knew that I wanted to create a level that had happy and exciting vibes, as this level would be a bonus level after all. Players should be attracted to the level and be inspired to play it of their own volition. I brainstormed using free word association bubble maps to think about the different creative possibilities of different level designs, as seen below:
While I was brainstorming the possibilities for an amusement park, the phrases “bright lights,” “nighttime,” and “rides” made me think of Rainbow Road, and that’s when it clicked, I should make a Rainbow Road amusement park! And that’s exactly what I did. I designed an amusement park stage complete with games, shops, attractions, and a final dungeon housing the reward of powerful weapons and armor for Mario, Geno, and Mallow, the game’s famous trio.
At the time of this writing, I am still in the iteration stage, and am working on making revisions to all of the shops and attractions in the level. To help in this iteration process, I began conducting early playtests by using index cards to represent shops and games, as can be seen below:
One of the games that I playtested is called Fishin Lakitu’s Duck Pond, and it is a game similar to the duck ponds that you find at carnivals where guests pay money to select a duck from the pond and win the prize displayed underneath. I also playtested a shop called Carroboscis’ Candy Shop. In both cases the player enjoyed the experience but said that they wished the things they were interacting with were more “real,” or at least visually represented, since one of the allures of carnivals is the elaborate and eccentric sites of the carnival or amusement park. In future iterations and playtests, my goal is to have stronger visual representations and to create interactions that feel more authentic.
Overall, I feel that the design process is going well, though. I’ll be posting again soon with final results of playtests of the final product, as well as insights that I’ve discovered along the way.
Justin's Game Design Blog 