Ambient Pressure – Level 2
|
This week I experienced the worst possible pain imaginable when working on something. I lost it all. To cut to the chase, the valuable lesson here is to save constantly. I’ve always been bad at it, I’ve tasted this sour fruit before, and still I didn’t do it. Several days of work was lost as I accidentally forced shut all applications when restarting my computer, and about 5 complete levels were lost. This should not be happening.
So here, in this post, I will make an attempt at describing what I did before it was lost.
Following from my last post, I aimed to completely explain to the player the way the game works by introducing the different parts of it in a seamless manner. Another teammate reached in with me on level design this week, and while she focused more on later stages, I have focused on the teaching aspect. I want the player to embrace the game’s mechanics like second nature, like jumping in Mario. The relatively slow movement, the sparse usage of ammunition, the tense listening of enemies. All this must be part of how the player experiences the game, and for that to happen, they must be properly shown and featured before being a true obstacle.
Already in my last post I designed a stage that showed the player what Samples are, how enemies work and how valuable ammunition is. For the stage that follows, I wanted to partly test their new-found knowledge, partly introduce something new. The following image is a poor recreation of what I had made before it was deleted:
As can be seen, the player spawns to the left of the stage. The first real obstacle in the level, and in truth, the entire game, is a fish circling around in the square-like room from which the whole level centers around. Passages in all directions are open, save from the one leading up. In this scenario, the player must shoot the door, prompting the fish to attack it and thus opening it. There is no other way to go up. It is not expected that the player will figure this out instantly – rather, they will be given some time to think this through. Two other routes are possible here, although they only offer limited movement. This is an act of teaching and foreshadows a more complex level structure further on, while still not confusing the player too much. The Sample in the bottom left corner will be seen by the player before they even reach the large room, most likely prompting them to search for a way to reach it. The true purpose of the entire stage is twofold:
Regarding the door, this is a sort of gamble still, as I have yet to see this tested on someone. I cannot be sure yet that this will work, but I am somewhat confident that the player, should they not figure out how to open it, will shoot it in point blank frustration. That might not be the desirable reason, but still, it does the job and allows them to progress.
The two-way ending of the stage is a sort of trick on the player, and teaches them the valuable lesson to trust the game. I am still not certain that is a viable reason to do it, and I feel in part that the ending does not fit the morale of the game as a whole, so I most probably will cut it. I just seems unfair. Shouldn’t punish exploration in a game about exploration.  |
