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Consensus: How many different kinds of enemies.... (Forums : Level Design : Consensus: How many different kinds of enemies....) Locked
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Mar 29 2015 Anchor

On average: How many different kinds of enemies should a single platform level have.

To define a level: in Mario 1 (NES) the worlds were levels so World 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 were all part of one level.

I have already gone through hundreds of games and counted. Most retro platform games seem to have around 5.

For example:

Mario 1 (NES) was on the low end with 4 on average, per level.
Mega Man also had a small per level. Usually 3 or 4 plus the boss.
Castlevania 1, 3, and 4 had about 5 each.

However, games that had a platform + adventure structure had more...
Zelda 2 (NES) had almost 20 by the end of level 1, due to the areas that the player must venture in before the first palace.
Castlevania 2 also had a quite a great number of enemies in each mansion and even more outside of the mansions.


Meanwhile there were platform games that ran straight through and yet had oddball amounts.
For example:
Ninja Gaiden and Double Dragon had roughly 10 per level.

On a side note....
Of course Ultima, Final Fantasy, Secret of Mana, Chrorno Trigger, regular Zelda and many role playing games had many more per level. These were not platform games, so I remove these games from my criteria.

To conclude:
I am wondering:

A.
To the average gamer, is 5 is too few or too many for a retro 2D platform game with levels that are about the same size as Mario 1 (NES).
B.

To the average gamer, is 15 is too few or too many for a retro 2D platform game with levels that are about the same size as Castlevania 2 or Zelda 2 (NES).

May 13 2015 Anchor

This is a tough question to answer as it really depends on the game and level layout, and won't necessarily be consistent between levels. The main goal is to keep the player interested. I've seen themed levels that have only two or three enemy types and they were still very entertaining. I've played levels with 20 enemies that suck. And vice versa. Focus on making each of your enemies unique from each other (though varieties of the same enemy, like different koopas in Mario is fine). Do that and have an interesting level layout and good interactions with the player, then any amount of enemy types should work.

As far as my general feeling, 5 for levels about the size of Mario levels seems fine, while 15 is probably the max I would have in Castlevania 2 levels, while I think 10-12 would be better to make the levels feel more distinct by having different enemy types.

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