Since the earliest days of platforming titles, players have always looked to the simple and complex aspects of them and dreamt about creating their own. Unfortunately not everyone has the ease or programming skills to make their own games, but that’s where titles like Super Mario Maker or the indie title Levelhead come into play. Levelhead is a grand new level creation platformer that’s a step above the rest in its sheer variety without ever making things too complex. It’s a title that wants to bring level creators together and allow them to mix and max crazy things whether they’re playing alone or with friends.
The biggest focus of Levelhead is, of course, creating stages themselves. Levelhead offers a variety of tools to use and has a big emphasis on triggers for traps and the like. The goal isn’t just to get to the end of the stage, but instead to deliver a package to the end of the stage. Players can create unique scenarios that allow them to take advantage of the goal and can use the package as a platform or require it to be tossed in order to make their way across unique tons of unique situations. The creator is quick to understand the basics, but there’s tons of ways to connect unique mechanics in order to make a level that feels truly unique and complex without the creating process requiring a crazy amount of skill.
Once a level is well and done, players will likely want to jump into actually playing them. Levelhead offers a full campaign for players to go through which is a great way to help get ideas or learn the basic platforming mechanics skills. Once they’ve finished with that they can jump into playing other levels as well. Playing stages allows one to four players either local or online to challenge all sorts of creator-made content. Going into levels with friends will make for a fun time, as players can work together or try to compete along the way and make things more difficult. While it’s great to play other people’s stages, Levelhead also finds a great answer to getting the creator’s stages played as well.
One big issue with level creators is finding a way to get people to take a look at their stages. Levelhead fixes this with a unique new way to earn ways to promote a user’s stages. By completing other user’s stages, the player will earn the ability to promote their stage and get it noticed the more it’s promoted. This in turn creates a great cycle in which players will continually try new stages coming out and along the way find hidden gems of stages they might enjoy speed running to get a record or share with their friends.
There’s a lot more level creators coming out slowly but surely, but Levelhead nails the type of community that creators are looking for. It offers a great amount for those who even just want to play stages, but the real meat of any level creation is making it easy to share and enjoy what others have managed to make as well. Although already out in early access on Steam, Levelhead is also planning on launching for Xbox and Switch with touch controls in handheld mode for the latter. Levelhead is currently aiming for full launch early next year. Anyone interested in trying it now can check it out on Steam in order to give their own feedback and practice creating crazy levels.
