Open Level Editor using the Tools - Level Editor menu.
Press the + button.
First of all, set the bottom layer size, it’s basically the size of the grid you’ll be drawing on.
Click the Add Layer button to add the first layer.
The grid appears, use left click and drag to draw. Drawing over the filled cells will erase them.
You will see what the real level will look like right away in the Game scene.
Now let’s add more layers. Click one of 2 buttons Add Larger Layer or Add Smaller Layer. It will add a layer of size 11x11 or 9x9 accordingly. Both options are good, the difference is only in the available space to draw on. Items between layers are shifted so we can’t have a similar-sized layer.
In this example, the smaller layer was chosen. Note that there is a “shadow” of the layer below, for easier understanding of where new layer tiles are located.
Let’s add one more layer using the Add Layer button. You can have any number of layers.
You can switch between the layers and make changes to them anytime. To switch the layer use the mouse wheel or the layer buttons on the right side of the canvas.
There is useful information below the canvas. First of all, you’ll see the error if there are not enough tiles to make a full sets of 3 tiles. The message will tell how many more tiles you need. Also below there is an amount of tiles and sets. Also difficulty score and small instruction.
How to control the level difficulty? Level difficulty is based on the amount of sets present and amount of unique tiles that can be used. The amount of unique tiles is set below the Bottom Layer Height field.
The more unique tiles will be on the level - the harder it will be to complete, as each tile will have less tiles of a similar type, the fewer unique tiles the level has - the more similar tiles will appear and it will be easier to make matches. The difficulty score below will help quickly understand how the level might feel. In this case, 2.4 sets per unique item means that there will be at least 2 similar pairs and sometimes 3, so solving will be relatively easy.
2 fields left to configure are Coins Reward - the amount of coins the user will get for a first-time completion. For the second time user will get only 25% of the amount. Use In Randomizer - if checked, the level will randomly appear after the user completes all the levels.
Additionally level can be made even more challenging by putting a special behavior on the tile. Right-click on the tile and select the effect from the list.
Effects description:
- Unknown tile - tile with a question mark, the real image will be hidden up until user picks it up.
- Crate - tile covered with a crate, once becomes available - pick any other tile to break the box.
- Ice - tile covered with ice, once becomes available - pick any 3 tiles to break the ice.
- Link - links the tile to a random neighbor. If one of the pair can’t be picked at the moment - both wouldn’t. If both can be picked - clicking on one will automatically pick the other as well.
You can quickly remove all special tiles from the entire level by clicking the Clear Effects button.
The last feature Trim Level button. It will remove all the unused space around the tiles.
This will allow optimally scale the level in gameplay making tiles as big as possible. If you leave unused space around, the tiles might be a bit smaller, and not the entire screen space will be used.
So best practice will be to start on the big canvas and simply trim it after the level is done.
Here is how it looks before trimming and after.
The level is complete, for quick testing simply click the Test level ****button at the top left corner.
