Game Platformer

Platformer Game Design

When to use

• The game is side-view with gravity: characters fall and jump.
• Brawlers, action platformers, run-and-gun, fighting-style games.

Mechanics

• Movement: walk with configurable speed; jump with configurable power. Optional: coyote time (grace after leaving a ledge), jump buffering, one double jump.
• Combat: melee (alternating punch/kick combo) and/or ranged (projectiles). Both can coexist.
• Ultimate skills — pick by character fantasy:

• Enemy AI: patrol (back-and-forth), chase (follow when detected), stationary (turrets), or custom (phase-based bosses — e.g., patrol above half health, chase below).

Level design discipline

• If the user doesn't specify level count: design one level.
• Copy predefined map templates (tutorial flatlands, vertical climb, combat fortress, boss chamber). Never invent ASCII maps from scratch — downstream tooling validates known templates.
• Allowed modifications only: add/remove coins, platforms, enemies (max ~4); adjust solid block shapes while keeping 2-tile thickness.
• Never change: map dimensions, the solid bottom rows, spawn position (left), exit/boss position (right). Enemy spawns need 3+ tiles of flat floor.
• Symbols: dot = air, hash = solid, equals = one-way platform, P = player spawn, E = enemy spawn, B = boss, C = coin, D = door.

Animation rules

• Exactly 2 frames per action.
• Three-layer sync: manifest frame keys → animation definition keys → the character's animation-key mapping. The mapping must define idle, walk, jump-up, jump-down, punch, kick, die — and fall back to idle for the ultimate if no unique animation exists. Missing punch/kick keys fall back to defaults that don't exist and crash.
• Tilemap layer names are case-sensitive ("Ground", "Objects").

Feel and presentation

• Camera follows with the player in the lower third of the screen and smooth lerp — standard for side-scrollers.
• Keep a short victory delay (~half a second) after the last kill so the win registers before the victory screen.
• Damage numbers: yellow for damage dealt, red for damage taken — show on every hit.

Multi-character games

Add a character-select stage before levels; each character is a separate player class with distinct stats/skills; route selection into level scenes through a player-class registry.

Common mistakes