I feel like my skills in designing video games has improved quite a lot. Specifically, there are a couple of issues that I've improved a lot on:
Level Length
We ended up doing each level in The Cherokee Indian TWICE because of this issue. Specifically, we designed our levels too long. Because of the way that the game was designed (where selectable weapons were all arranged in the middle of the level), we never thought about how long it would take to go from one side to the other.
It ended up costing us even more time because we ended up placing the tiles in the levels as well. I remember thinking that we probably worked on each level for about 5 HOURS. For such a simple game, that was probably too long.
Risk vs. Reward
This is something I've never felt very good with. Even with The Good Apprentice, which was an action game, I never really felt that I could make an exciting level where rewards were visible but difficult to get.
With this new game, I feel pretty good about it. There are different paths to take and I tried to establish a nice balance of simple levels and hard rewards.
Menu/HUD Design
Not being an artist AT ALL, it's always been difficult for me to come up with how things should look visually. So, whenever I've tried to design menus, they've always taken me a long time. Menus are pretty easy to code but are really dependent on the features that you put into the game.
For the current game, it was a pretty easy process. Not because I knew exactly which features were going in the game, just because I've had more experience in determining what the game needed.
Game play Balance
Going along with the level designing, I feel like I've done a pretty good job of knowing how much health an enemy should have. Well, I feel like the game has a solid balance of power ups, health pick ups, and enemy intelligence/health. I also think the weapons feel solid (if unoriginal).
I'm definitely going to have as many people as possible try the game, but... I feel pretty good about this game. It's a simple platformer, and it's a game that I've tried to make in the past using Game Maker many times.
Whether it's good for the flash market, however, I'm not really sure about.
