All games, even the visual novels, have its part of level design. The level design is the part of the design that is responsible for the missions, the maps and the environments. It is half artistic, half technical discipline. In games like this one, the level design is mixed with the interface design, but (at least in my opinion) is still level design. So, in this section, I will show to you how I fixed one of the biggest problems that Mi Historia (the Jam’s game) had.

When I started the design of Mi Historia, I decided to make it hand-painted. I’m faster and I have more experience that way, so I thought it would be a good idea. The problem came when I started to build the game. I scanned my paintings and I passed them to Photoshop. There I put them in the right resolution 1920×1080. And that was the first problem. By changing the resolution of the painting this one was distorted. So, my solution was to cut them to make them fit in the 1920×1080 resolution.  After that, the second problem appeared. When I was making the level design, adding the dialog panels and the buttons, I discovered that I didn’t let any space for them. So the panels were covering part of the scene. Due at that moment, I didn’t have more time to fix that problem, I let the game like this.

Well, I decided to base the level design in the old RPG games that have three sections on the screen. That way I fixed all the problems at once. I let a section to put the scene, a section to put the dialog and a section to put the options. Leaving the screen much cleaner and tidy.