Mateo San Miguel
•
Game Designer
Level Design
I wanted Cactus County to be a simple game. A lot of puzzle games get unnecessarily complex; complicated rules, massive levels, unintuitive solutions... I tried my best to make a game that felt satisfying throughout, but not without giving the player a fair challenge.
​
The only way the player interacts with the world is by clicking cacti, which makes them pop and shoot spikes in a number of directions. Because of this, all puzzles are just a matter of clicking cacti in the right order.
​
The difficulty then comes from the number of cacti and other elements I put in a level and their configuration. I introduce new cacti or puzzle elements every 5 levels or so, enough time for the player to understand each mechanic.
Iterations
Cactus County started as Balloon Pop, a game for the Low Effort Game Jam. I ended up winning that game jam, needless to say, I did put in the effort. This first version was 10 levels long and only had orthogonally-shooting cacti.​
​
The grid was also slightly bigger, which had the issue of making some of the earlier levels more complex than they needed to be and some of the later levels seem too intimidating.
​
The second iteration was a submission for a university project. I expanded upon what I had in Balloon Pop by adding more types of cacti and a minecart. In this version, I wanted to focus on difficulty and the interactions between puzzle elements.
​
The minecart was the most impactful addition as it multiplied the number of possible level states within a given level and it facilitated making harder levels.
​
Cactus County is the latest version of this idea. This time I wanted to focus on smaller puzzles and a cleaner feel overall. I made the grid smaller and added a lot of player feedback compared to the previous iterations. I also decided to remove minecarts and added cows instead, which trigger a lose condition when hit.
​
The smaller grid made me rethink how I design levels and it restricts the possible complexity of each, as a result, I would say the puzzles are more 'elegant' now. For player feedback, I added some juice when the player eliminates a bandit, hover effects on interactable elements, scene transitions, etc.
​
