Fog and Darkness system
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Hello, I am Hampus Bergström, the game designer for the team Wendigo that works on the game Umibōzu. This week I have been redesigning how the fog system works within our game to help us in the team to solve the problem of creating levels and a sense of progression within our game. As our game is a vertically scrolling game that takes place on the open ocean and with randomly spawned enemies we had a hard time solving this problem. We thought about having more difficult enemies and more obstacles as the game progresses, but we thought the player would still not feel any real sense of progression, we needed something more. That’s when I took another look at our fog system within the game. Before the changes the fog would hide everything in the game, only showing silhouettes of different objects in the water. When the player activates their spotlight that shines light in a cone shape from the player center, every object in the spotlight’s range would reveal their true nature. Now this system itself isn’t bad at all, but we could do a lot better to convey the feeling of progression with this mechanic by modifying it. The new system introduces a mechanic that works together with the fog and the spotlight, the darkness mechanic. The fog and the spotlight work in the same way as before but as the game progresses darkness fills the screen and in the darkness the player can’t see anything at all without their spotlight. There will always be a light source on the ship besides the spotlight but that light source will not reveal the silhouettes and when more darkness comes that light source will emit lesser light. This is a small mechanic with huge implications. When there is more darkness within a certain level the player will also have less time to react to different enemies/objects within the game. The darkness will also visually tell the player that they have entered a new level. This together with for example more difficult enemies, more obstacles and less power-ups will help the game get a sense of progression and levels.   |