Rayman level 13: The sir of the rings

  In Rayman´s Designer engine, the A to B typical goal of a platformer videogame is also accompanied by a primary task of collecting blue orbs called "tings", normally 100 tings you must collect if you want to reach the goal sign and consider the level finished. As that, you can take advantage of the mechanic by creating obligatory paths that could be left behind if it wasn´t for the obligatory collectibles that the blue tings are.

I am explaining this because all of my levels designed here have this property. As a special trait exclusive from my creations, I also made another optional collectible which are 100 dark blue tings scattered across the map. These dark blue tings have the function of guiding you across the level, they aren´t mandatory to collect and don´t affect the game whatsoever.

   This map attempts to follow a story: Rayman falls into a subterranean sea-cave and he must hang around deeper and deeper the grotto.

To travel here, Rayman must use the rings flying around. Be careful! some of them are traps! As our hero advances more perils lurk him, some Dark minions and others hostiles innate; but more precious elements appear too...

This is a marathon level, it has all the exclusive enemies and gimmicks from the CAVE.MAP tile. Yet as the name suggests, it´s main focus is the mechanic of the "flying rings" present in Rayman, used for traversing long gaps and large voids. That´s why the name also hints about rings there. The reason for choosing the Cave world is in homage of one of the zones from Rayman Junior, where it´s in the cave world and it focused on the rings as well.

The starting has Rayman falling to the level, meeting a spider and a lava rock. As a matter of fact, there are rings, but it´s not something that takes over the map to the point where the only mechanic is swinging from ring to ring. As I said, there will be encounters with all the enemies from the cave world, for example.

The map is basically a horizontal road of islands where you will use the rings to jump from island to island, with exceptions where you will go to upper part of the map like when meeting your first checkpoint.

Another thing I introduced in this map is that there are traps, a couple of them, the way to discover them is more a series of trial and error attempts. Both traps come in the form of deceiving flying rings which they will send Rayman to the falling death if he grabs to them. Perphaps is not the best way to make a trap and send the player to an unfair death and it could rather send confussion to the player rather than having the interpretation that he fell to an actual trap, but I decided to try this way back then.

As the player reaches the end, the map design suffers a change: the subterranean water reaches to an end and the rings are no more after a final challenge with them. Then we fall to small vertical corridors where we´ll need to use the inflatable balloon platforms to climb it up. This process is inspired by one of the Cave maps from Rayman Designer pack.

At the end, a party of monsters will make difficulty to reach for the exit. Also, I decided to add treasure and precious stone ornaments close to the end of the level, symbolizing as we reached the end of the cave, where the most precious treasures were awaiting for...

Video gameplay of the full level on play. The rings Rayman doesn´t grab are the traps to avoid: