How My Village Fell Apart (and rose again)

Last time, I was so excited to see the watercolor village come alive, finally — roofs, fences, a goose somewhere in the background pretending to help.

It looked lovely. It felt right…

It was completely wrong.

At least from a level design perspective.

After finishing that pretty layout, I finally put Zoti inside it. And I instantly realized that it was not playable =( Walking across the scene was just too long (35 seconds). The distances and pacing did not make sense once I viewed it through a player’s eyes instead of an artist’s.

I had drawn the detailed version before understanding the functional one.

That’s the mistake.

So, to not fall into the same trap twice, I went back to the design basics instead of immediately redrawing everything:

• Experimented with how long it takes to cross the screen at normal speed until a sensible time was found
• Drew new bounding boxes to see how puzzle sequences might flow
• Tested ideas right on the sketch

Basically, I stopped treating scenes as paintings — and started treating them as playable spaces. Once I rebuilt the village using those principles, everything felt tighter, more purposeful.

Small, but critical outcome and reminder for myself

Don’t get seduced by pretty mockups.

Draw faster, test earlier, and let playability lead the art - not the other way around.

🎥 The video version of this devlog: The Dumbest Level Design Mistake I Made (and What I Learned)