Find the next safe line.
Strong dark and separated platform groups let players skim the route before they start the run.
2D PLATFORMER / 3-DAY GAME JAM / 2026
The Last of the Stars
Drawing the only way up through a wasted planet. Inspired by Jump King and Only Up.
- MY ROLE
- Artist &
Level Designer - TIMEFRAME
- 3 days / September 2026
- CONTEXT
- SFU Summer Summit Game Jam
- FORMAT
- Collaborative browser platformer
A playable platformer shipped within three days, built by a four-person team around a drawing mechanic and a tricky environment.
Make the gameplay feel urgent
The Last of the Stars is a 2D platformer about an astronaut escaping a wasted planet. The player can draw the route forward, but the drawn platforms slowly fade away. Pausing carries the risk of falling back and starting over (in which is a good things, as they fall, they will frusfrate that they didn't get to see the next platform, and try again).
Players needed to understand where they could move, where a drawn path would help, and how to time each move.
Art Assets and Level Design
I created the art assets and designed level layouts around the game’s core drawing mechanic. My work focused on platforming rhythm, navigation, pacing, and the pressure created by platforms, traps, and obstacles.
I collaborated with a game developer, a background and graphic artist, and a game and audio designer to move from concept to a playable browser build within three days.
- Level design: planned climb routes, platform spacing, hazards, and recovery points.
- Visual design: developed assets and layouts that remain readable against the high-contrast orange city.
- Jam collaboration: adapted scope and layouts quickly as the drawing mechanic moved into the working build.
Read it, Draw it and Climb it
The level alternates between rapid platforming and short planning windows. A limited ink meter keeps drawn paths deliberate, while the ink fades quickly enough to keep players from drawing their way through every challenge.
Spend ink with intent.
Jumping and creating ink costs energy, it makes both movement and drawing into limited resources.
Keep moving upward.
Falling after a failed attempt gives players a reason to try again and discover what comes next, as explained in the urgent section.
Drafting the Route
We first settled on a strong orange palette for the industrial world inspired from bladerunner. I then moved into rough route sketches in aseprite. You can observe that I drew the player movement, ladders, fans, traps, moving platforms, decorations, and the intended level flow.
Keeping the background visible beneath each pass helped the artists draw and polish the final build, which is the light gray building in the sketch map (fig 2).
Playable Build
The final build carries my original palette and skyline into a readable platforming space, using the same ground palette established in the sketches.
Testing the sketches showed that green Nano Ink lines and the meter would stay distinct from the environment, so we kept that colour in the final build. Lais, our second artist, then polished and refined the overall look.
Left 4 Jams
- AMIR KASHANI
- Game Developer
- ERIC GABRIEL CHENG LI
- Artist + Level Design
- LAIS ZORZETE
- Background Artist + Graphic Designer
- WESLEY
- Game Designer + Audio Designer
More Time!!!!
We should have spend less time on arguing the game mechanics, in the early first day and mid second day we were arguing about whether we should use drawing ink or player control falling tetris.
We should have spend more time on level design and polishing stuffs the second we decided it's going to be a 2D platformer, we have so little time and we ended up not able to make more levels and leaving the huge blank space on the top and the button to initiate the fans feature was never implemented.
The pixel size of the level is also a trouble for us, as we did not really care about the clarity and just painted the entire map, huge mistakes, because in the actual game it's actually like 300% zoomed in and you can even count the pixels in r/countablepixels.