- Release Date: Jun 9, 2024
- Made By: The MaGMML Team
- Keywords: Fangame, Freeware, Action, Platformer, Run n' Gun, Narrative
- My Role: Writing, Level Design, Boss Design, GML Programming, Trailer Production, QA Testing
More Info
Make a Good Mega Man Level 3 (or MaGMML3 for short) is the third installment in the Make a Good Mega Man Level series. Like its predecessors, the game features community-created levels submitted as part of a level design contest, wrapped around in a package with a massive hubworld, hundreds of NPCs, a narrative, and lots of side content. The contest was originally held in 2018 and I participated. Out of 170+ submissions, mine was 9th place. After that, I was invited to guest-design a level for the postgame invite-only area, where I designed and also coded a boss for my entry. However, after many setbacks due to poor project management, the game was delayed until a new director took over earlier this year. That was when I was brought onto the team. With new management in place, the project was completed, and it's likely one of the biggest hobby game projects ever made. Here's the launch trailer I recorded, directed and edited:When I was brought onto the team, my primary duty was to "salvage" parts of the script that were the result of decisions forced by the previous management that were too far in to cut. The "Rivals", a group of five colorful characters who were all part of the same in-universe tournament with their own motivations and ideals. Besides one, which the director had already taken and improved, they were very underbaked characters, with barely a page of information in their original documents. I took the most important parts and from scratch over the course of a week reconcepted and reinvented their characters, giving them proper arcs, writing NPC dialogue and cutscenes, and turning them into figures that the community fell in love with. Since MaGMML has a generally young demographic of teenagers, I tried to channel the energy of a shonen anime and have each character represent a theme or emotion I wanted to convey. Hunter Woman is a social recluse obssesed with her primary directive, Forge Woman is a construction worker whom Mega Man comes to romanticize as a "the ideal middle class citizen", Element Man is a boy who wants respect but is outcast due to his inability to communicate with words, and Presto is a jerk (there's always one!).
Additionally, in the case of one of them, Element Man, I ended up having to design his battle from scratch in a little over 12 hours to replace a previous concept. I wrote up a detailed specs document that served as a guide for the programmers and communicated with them to ensure it matched my vision, while taking into account their changes made for the sake of time and gamefeel. In the end, I came out of MaGMML3's development extremely proud, not only because my submission could finally be public to everyone, but because I also managed to imbue my soul into a group of characters that had meaning and things to say to the audience, and the audience loved. To cap this off, here's my 9th place entry, which I made back in 2018 and I'm still proud of: