Making it Feel Right
Design and Implementation in As Aventuras de Mumbuquinha 2.0
The Maricá Games Jam had a specific brief: educational game, local cultural identity, accessible to all ages. Three people on the team. One handled the art. One handled the educational content. Level design, game design, balancing, and programming in Construct 3 fell to me.
The new game was to build on top of the first one, that was a classic platformer - inspired by Mario, Sonic and the likes.
The challenge wasn't the brief. It was that the initial design intentions hadn't yet been shaped around implementation realities, engine constraints, or game feel. My role became translating those intentions into something playable, readable, and satisfying.
The Decision
The core mechanic became a pure auto-platformer: the character runs automatically, the player only jumps. One input.
That wasn't a compromise — it was a clarification. A single well-designed action with good level design is enough to create rhythm, tension, and satisfaction. The brief called for accessibility across age groups. One button is as accessible as it gets. The constraint solved multiple problems at once.
Level design blueprint before implementation.
The Work
With the mechanic defined, the real design work moved to level design and balancing.
Another person created the original level design blueprints/whiteboxes.
I adjusted the obstacle clusters to create readable patterns — players needed to be able to anticipate what was coming without the game feeling trivial. I calibrated jump timing so the window for each obstacle felt fair but not forgiving. I tuned difficulty progression across stages so the curve felt intentional rather than arbitrary.
The pixel art and educational content were handled by other team members. What I owned was everything that determined whether the game felt good in the player's hands.
Spreadsheet with dialog/quiz, options and correct answers, used for implemetation later on Construct —
by exporting it in JSON and loading the JSON inside the engine.
The Result
The judges highlighted the mechanic and the difficulty curve specifically. The game placed 3rd in the jam, presented on stage at an event sponsored by the Maricá City Hall and CODEMAR.
The lesson wasn't about the brief or the constraints. It was about what good level design can do with a single player input — and how much of a game's feel lives in the calibration work that happens after the specs are written.
Final Level Design with environment art.
As Aventuras de Mumbuquinha 2.0 — Maricá Games Jam · 2025 · 3rd Place
Role: Game Design, Level Design, Balancing, Programming (Construct 3)