So you want to make amazing, fun, and good looking traditional levels in Mega Man Maker, but you don’t know what to do, or how to do it? Let’s fix that! Click Here to watch the video version of this article.

Starting to make a level #

Alright, let’s start with the basics. Before building anything you are going to need a level idea or level type. That idea will be the base of your level, what makes it unique. For example, you can give your level an electric theme or make it more like a water stage instead. Here I will join those two concepts, and make an electric water stage. I’ll name it Watery Watts. Every new level starts with the initial idea, just try to stick to that idea.

Planning your level #

Now I’ll showcase a underutilized trick: making a palette of the level, or as I call it: the room of Thingies^TM. The Palette is a room in the mega man maker level builder where you are going to add every tileset, enemy, level object, or boss that will be on your level. Let’s start by making a tileset… yeah I’m pretty bad at this 😅. You could just pick one tileset and build your level with it, but if you try to complement one tileset with another your level most of the time it will look much better.

Mixing up tilesets also allows you to be more creative with your level, giving you more customization options. A good idea is to experiment with the tileset on the first screen of your level, as I did here.

ENEMIES. Too many is too bad #

Enemies, another important part of a level. Every enemy should have a reason to exist in a level. For example, this enemy is placed here to guard these goodies.

Of course we should to follow the theme of the level, though that is not always possible. In my example, most of the enemies will be electricity based. Not all are electric though, and that’s ok. Just try to pick sensible ones that don’t clash with our theme. For example, in a volcano stage, don’t use ice or water enemies.

We also need to choose the number of types of enemies that will be on a level. I put 5 enemy types in this level, which is the recommended amount. You shouldn’t just put every enemy you can find, you should pick a few and stick to them throughout the level. I chose the Elec’n’, the Met, the Joe Classic, the electric gabyoal, and the oshitsu osarettsu (what a name). Oh, And a fence. An electric one, of course. I also picked the miniboss of the level, which is a fish for some reason. And please never put enemies that can hit you in the first screen of the level and Checkpoint rooms. Doing that doesn’t give the player time to react to what’s happening on screen.

Anyway, Last thing you should add to the palette is one or two gimmicks, and the amount of checkpoints. Oh and the background. Use only one or two gimmicks if possible, you don’t want to bug the player with all sort of different and random gimmicks. You should also chose a fitting song for the level.

Building the level #

We are done with our room of thingies, now is time to actually build. Before placing any tiles, some expert level builders start the level design by placing the backgrounds first, that way having have something to follow when doing your level design. You can also place dummy tiles in those rooms to be able to change the screen trancitions to wherever you want them to be ahead of time. And please, don’t ever do this!

This is called screen wobble, and is so annoying in levels. It is caused by the ladder being between two connected screens, leading to a single room or two disconnected ones.

Following the theme of the level, start designing it. Always remember not to put enemies in unfair positions and never put more than 3 or so enemies in each screen. When introducing gimmicks make sure to make it safely, and try not to make your level too hard or too easy, unless that is what you are aiming for, in which case you should say something like “kaizo” or “challenge” and also give plenty of lives to wily challenge players. But, if is hard for you, imagine how it would be if you tried it for the first time.

My finished level goes like this: it starts on with a decently easy start, and as the player traverses the stage it will start getting a bit harder. After the first checkpoint, the spikes are introduced to the level, making the jumps harder. Just before the boss I added the last challenge of the level. For the boss, which is Sparkman, I tried to not make it generic, by adding a bit of randomness to it. Now, go and make great levels!

Again, click here to watch the video version of this article!