Topic, How to create a new level + tips and tricks

My idea of a good level is to spread colours out evenly, (if you are doing a sequence of levels). The same, red-yellow levels will just become boring. Also, figure out a good design. One of the most common traps is the pros and cons of symmetrical levels.

Pros:
- Nice Design.
- Good for Beginners and relatively easy.

Cons:
- It's the same trick or twist each time.
- BLockoban is a Logic game. Not an art museum.

It's up to you to decide how to do your level, but consider these points carefully!

Finding a title:
Good titles often consist of words not many people would come across, such as "Staphylococci" by yours truly. Here are my top tips for titles.

- Look in the Dictionary and prowl for words.
- Relate to inspiration you have had.
- Try to visualise the bricks. Squint your eyes.
- Spellcheck. We all have OCD about spelling.

So, they're all my tips for BB, and I hope to be seeing some more levels!

The title:

The Thumbnail:

The trick here is to get a unique twist on the challenge of your level.

As you can see when you open the editor it's divided in squares where you place your tiles, this grid cannot be affected. You will also see a blue rectangle in the middle of the editor. It measures 9 x 11 tiles which is the recommended size for your level. You can always ignore this and make your level bigger or smaller at will.

The Blockoban editor is relativly simple, but gives alot of posibilities! The most important thing is this: You can not have more targets than blocks of the corresponding colours. You can have more blocks than targets though. However try to avoid implementing to many of these do called dummies.

In Blockoban there are four categories, it's up to you to choose which one your level fits in. The categories are "Kids", "Easy", "Medium" and "Hard". As an inexperienced creator you should probably aim for the Kids or Easy category and work your way up through the difficulities.

When making a "Kids" or "Easy" level, keep in mind that looks are important as the challenge shall be somewhat easy. Try to keep the level symetrical or make it like a picture, though these are also mostly symetrical. An example of Blockoban art is this level by lmr: 2-tu lips (BLockoban). These kind of levels can also be small with a simple and fun challenge like in official level nr.24 by Matty: Getting Started (BLockoban).

When making a level in the "Medium" or "Hard" the challenge is in focus, but aesthetics are important here as well. When making a level in one of these categories you can get much more out of the advanced functions like grouping and ice-blocks. You might have experimented with these before and as you then know, ice-blocks will be pushed when hit by another block and grouping several blocks makes them move together. Making a level in one of these categories is definately not for everyone, especially the "Hard"-category. Only a few masters of the game can make good levels in this category, so don't start of there!

A good rule of thumb in Blockoban is that a level should never need more than 100 moves in order to be completed as this will make your level tedious.

The editor of this game is not the best editor we have on the site and is quite hard to use so take your time trying to learn it. When you open the editor a simple level shows up, the simplest thing is to just delete it, which I'll explain how to do later on.

First of all you have to open the editor menu by clicking "MENU" on the top of your screen. You will now see six big colored circles and six smaller ones together with a delete and a new shape button.

The big circles are the balls in the game, position them as you like on the grid. (The grid can't be affected)

The smaller circles are nodes you make walls with. This is the hardest part of the editor. When you click one of the small circles you can place it as you like in the editor. You must place three nodes or more to make one object. To make another object you must go to the menu and click "New shape", you can't just click around as you want. You've now made a shape, but for you shape to function as a wall, the spike which appears in the middle of each wall must point outwards. If not the wall will let the ball into the shape, but never let it out. When you've mastered CoBaCoLi you can also exploit this to make inverted shapes on purpose to enrich the gameplay. Here's one of my own levels as an example: Through the Maze (CoBaCoLi)

Left of the "New Shape"-button you've got the "Delete"-button, this enables you to delete any node or ball. Note that any shapes created before the last time you pressed the "New Shape"-button will be deleted as a whole instead of as singular nodes being deleted one by one.

Ït's very hard to make a good level, but try to keep it original, that's the most important thing. And remember there's no neccesity to over-complicate your level, this masterpiece by Pof (Save me from space (CoBaCoLi)) is a fine example that the simplest is often the best as well

Path4Mouse
When creating Path4Mouse levels it's important to be original, any idea already used often means it's less likely to become official. It's also a good idea to avoid having similar or identical challanges more than once unless it's strictly required(symmetry levels) as it's very frustrating when it's hard.
Try to make use of the curved walls, square edges don't look very good and make the level more boring.
Some of the tiles are bigger than one square, use this to your advantage! build a spinner with lava inside or checkpoints under a sliding wall!
Try to use a variety of tiles(unless it's not a long level), it should help to make the level more entertaining.