Cole Williams - Level Design and System Design
South for the Winter
South for the Winter is a game I created for my first game jam submission. The game jam this was submitted to was Cozy Winter Jam 2025. In this game the player takes control of a bird flying south for the winter and going through different environments going from colder to warmer until they reach their destination.
Project Info:
Game Jam: Cozy Winter Jam 2025
My Roles:
Solo Creator
Seasons
The game has three seasons that the player can fly through. I chose to only do three seasons because I thought spring and summer would seem to similar in appearance and the difficulty curve would get too high with 4 seasons. Although a year has 4 seasons, for the purpose of the game 3 just felt right. Each season has a different aesthetic showing cold to warmer temperatures as time goes on, showing the flight south for the winter. In each season, the projectiles, background, and particles change. The winter season has glacier rocks projectiles and snowflakes particles while the fall season has pumpkin projectiles and leaf particles.
Difficulty
The seasons in the game bring about increased difficulty through speed. Visually the background moves faster while mechanically the projectiles spawn at a faster rate. The length of each season remains the same at 60 seconds for the player to endure before moving forward. At the end of the final season, an overlay appears rather than a new season starting.
Season Transition
Something I am particularly proud of is the look of the season transitions. I completed this by having the camera constantly moving along with the backgrounds layered overtop each other. When one season ends, the background for that season is set to detach from the camera, which in turn moves it backward with the new season slowly taking its place.
Art Assets
All the art assets aside from the particles are created by those I credited in the credits. Some were from online while others were from my significant other who volunteered to draw some of the backgrounds and menus. I created the particle images using https://www.piskelapp.com/
