A new classic
One of the initial concepts of SHMAT's level design is that, in addition to being a pinball arena, two players should play it simultaneously.
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However, in pinball games, the player's agency is very small; the player spends most of the game just watching the ball bounce around the field. Our main objective was to increase this agency to the point where it is compatible with a 1v1 game.
More obstacles
Players must bounce the ball
Having pawns that players could control to pick up the ball and shoot made the design of any pinball table challenging to work with, as there was nothing stopping players from shooting the ball directly into the goal, ignoring aspects of a classic pinball game.
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To make our level more susceptible to a pinball experience, we added several obstacles to encourage players to bounce the ball across the field.
A challenge for two
Multiplayer games need twice as much attention
One of the aspects that caught my attention during the development of SHMAT is how producing the level design of a multiplayer game can be highly challenging.
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Unlike single-player games, throughout the production stage in multiplayer, we must consider how two players will behave simultaneously. This makes the process much more complex, as we must think about the double possibilities created by two simultaneous users interacting. Always considering what a user will do, responding to or in relation to what the other has done.