Hidden Dark Development

 Hidden Dark: Designing Underground Waterfall

Hidden Dark, as a general premise, is a exploration focused puzzle-platformer. My Lead said that the game wasn't going to have any combat and was going to be solely focused on the exploration and puzzle solving. This is admirable, but does make designing the levels for the game more complicated as it gives me less levers and pullies to play with when I don't have a combat model. This also means that the exploration and puzzles of the game have to be spot on: No confusion on the goal, cleverly hidden paths that are either blocked by lack of a tool, metroidvania style, or through obscured by how the player is guided. All this to say, I think the level design of this game will have to be quite strong to make it successful and it won't be easy.

Luckily, there are a lot of good examples of good metroidvania games that I can use as reference to help study player path, guiding the player, organizing the map, and designing with future player tools in mind. Hollow Knight, Metroid Prime, Metroid Dread are just a few of the good examples of this.

The one direction that was clearly given was wanting to have a big, impressive waterfall. I loved this idea, but also knew that it would be pivotal to have the correct setup for that payoff.

This level comes directly after a level called "Catacombs". Needless to say, it's meant to be a dark, claustrophobic level with high tension, keeping the player scared for what might lie around any corner. That being kept in mind, I wanted this level to be the catharsis after weathering the storm, a calm and peace the player gets for making it past such a dark, scary place. So for the level, I decided to make the puzzle solving a bit lighter and let the player take in more of the environment. After some talk with the lead, we decided it'd be cool to make the player light up the first area as a transition from the Catacombs. So in the first room the player will have to hit three switches to turn the lights on that are fairly simple to get to. Once the lights are switched it reveals a visual key in order to open up the next area.

The second floor I wanted to have the player move around big columns in order to form a perspective based picture as well as a staircase to the next gate switch that opens the exit. This to me provided a couple of satisfying but simple mechanics with moving big objects and assembling a picture. Both I think have some inherent fun with them and thus I thought they'd make for a soothing mechanic to move the player to the next areas.

I wanted to add one more puzzle/floor before giving the big reveal of the underground waterfall. This puzzle mixes up the flow a little bit by moving the player up the ramp to gain access to the center island and then using controls on that island to complete the second island and open the gate. I thought this could be a nice change of pace as well as giving a small sense of awe. The two islands would be floating with temples on each of them. Combine that with some well placed God-rays and all the flowing water and I think it'll be quite the scene to stumble upon. The first puzzle would be completing a mural by twisting the center pyramid to make another mural depicting more story lore, similar to the puzzle before. The second stage the player wouldn't have a mural to try to copy, but would have to match up power lines using their visor ability.

This section is the big reveal, showing the player the enormous, majestic, purple waterfall. I had the player enter in a very narrow inlet that led to a small pool. From there, there's a forest in front of the player that obscures their view. I wanted to make sure the player could be placed into the environment without spoiling the surprise just yet. From there I'll have small streams that are feeding from the waterfall pool into the small pool the player entered in from, guiding the player to question where that water is coming from and hopefully spurring them to investigate. I have the majority of the waterfall obscured by tree covering as the player is slowly climbing up it's level until they finally break the tree line and are met with and expanse of waterfall, more than they can see on their screen at one time and taller than their vision can show at once. I have a small bench placed in the center of the view that I'd ideally have the player be able to sit in to take in the awesome and peaceful site while not having to move anything but their camera. I have a lore item sitting next to the bench that the player can pick up and read from the bench as well telling more about the waterfall itself and its significance.

The beachline of the waterfall lake has two exits, one to the left and one to the right. I'm hoping to put in some visual indications pointing the player to go in the left side where there is a puzzle they must complete in order to move into the right side entrance. In this version I have a grapple point that opens up after finishing the left side puzzle but I think it would be better to have a gate that opens after completing the puzzle, just to provide less confusion to the player and cut down on backtracking.

This left side of the waterfall will be in it's own little cavern that is also connected to the upper section of the waterfall. This is to tease the player about getting up high on the waterfall. Then I wanted to make a teleporter puzzle section where the player would be navigating up and down between stalactites and stalagmites looking around for the correct path to get to the other side where there is a switch they need to hit. There will be points where the players can fall off the path and they'll be provided a way to get back up and restart the puzzle. The idea is to give the player a little bit more challenge here before giving them access to get up on top of the waterfall. Once they hit the switch there will be some sort of audio cue to lead them back out to the main waterfall to check out the other side where they can now get through and up to the of the waterfall.

I have a grapple point here that the player would've switched on but I think I'll remove it in the next version in favor of a big, thematic door that opens up. With that, the player would get to make a long walk up a path that has many religious statues depicting various important gods to the people who used to be here. This is to continue building up the tension and importance of this waterfall as well what the player is about to do which is cross over the entire waterfall hoping from rock to rock using grapple points. There is also a grand exit out onto the waterfall and a platform to look out and down toward the bench you were sitting at earlier. Once the player navigates the top of the waterfall, they'll end up on the other, upper left side of the waterfall where they can turn on the teleporter to skip the jumping puzzle.

Once the player has made it across the waterfall they get yet another surprise to find a small village placed behind the behemoth waterfall. It will be vacant like the rest of the game, but it'll be one of the most intact villages that they've come across until now. They'll find the gate leading out of the village to be locked and that the key is found in the village leader's house. I'm hoping this prompts the player to transition from being in awe and amazed to being curious and inquisitive. At the very least players will need to go to the village leader's house to pick up the key as well as their final tool, Reverse Polarity, which allows them to reverse water flows.

Inside the village leader's house the player finds that it also holds the main counsel room as well as a very small jail. The player is forced to get the key to the confiscation room in the the bed chambers of the leader and then must pick up and read a note that gives revelation to the whole plot twist of the game, that this seemingly ancient civilization was alive and functioning when you were in orbit around the planet but suffered and temporal extinction event. Once they unlock the cage they gain the key as well as the new Reverse Polarity tool. Armed with the key and the RP, the player can now leave the village and find their way over to a waterfall/pool that connects to the Waterfall Right section below and the Collapsed City above. Also armed with their new knowledge of the civilization being very recently decimated, they will see all the rest of the parts of the game in a whole new light and hopefully leave them in a daze as they imagine all of the people and things that were mere moments away from being observed.

Now, this is still a first draft of the level, and I've sense been moved to other parts of the projects in hopes of getting a working prototype, so I have yet to receive feedback directly from my lead as to what he thinks of this map but I can already say there are a few things I want to do in my next revision of the map.

First and foremost I would want to add more small elements relating to the players other tools, grappling hook, visor vision, and teleporter pads. Little puzzles that aren't needed for the main path of the level but could be for unlocking little story details or fun paths that give the player a different perspective of their respective rooms. As well, I'll need to get the level blocked out to really get a feeling of what the scaling needs to be to get the pacing and effects that I'm looking to achieve with each section of the level. Some puzzles I may have to simplify or make more complicated in order to achieve that pacing. This along with my mentions before of changing the level layout slightly at the waterfall to replace a grappling point activation with a fancy door that opens.

I might try to add more interconnectivity between the levels that the player can access once they have the Reverse Polarity. Some fun backtracking options that I could couple with RP puzzles that where hidden in plain sight.

Hidden Dark Narrative Designs

The lead game designer said that the one story element that he wanted for the game was some sort of twist ending where the player finds out that these old, decrepit ruins they've been running through exploring is actually modern and was pushed forward in time 1000 years in a second. It's a really cool idea and can make for a great effect, but, like anything awesome, it needs to be fleshed out and explained in a way that makes sense. That's where I came in.

The first idea I had when he told us all about this was some sort of "time" bomb going off. From there I just backtracked what would be needed to get to the event of a time bomb going off unexpectedly. War is usually an easy answer to this, but I wanted more than just generic war, a civil war has a lot more implications in it that could provide juicy story bits. Then the question is what were they fighting over? Had to be something that they had very strong feelings about, something fundamentally important, moral. I decided to have it based around a religious dispute involving an invention my Lead wanted, the Reverse Polarity that controls the way water flows. If they had a religion that was based around water in some way, controlling the flow of water could been seen as a blessing of the gods or the work of greedy heretics. This gave me a premise that I felt could be seen as a strong enough reason to start a bloody civil war.

From there I realized I needed to give the player some event they could connect between what they know happened to them in a present time and something they read while on the planet they assume has been extinct for 1000 years. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a good way of getting the player to connect those dots without outright telling them at some point "Hey these people were here yesterday". I decided that if the player had seen something like a bright blue light from the collapse of a star, something that would only be witnessed once ever would be a good event that's big enough for a random planet to know about but also rare enough that when something mentions the explosion while the player is planet-side they can have confidence that the two events were the same event and hopefully they'll put together that the planet shouldn't look as old as it does.

After I had established a rough outline for how the story would carry out, I went to work designing the objects the player would be able to interact with to get all the story bits or hints that we wanted to communicate. These first three are the most common ways that I devised to get information to the player, the military terminal, data pads, and bulletin boards. Each is also bound to a specific way they'll convey information. The terminals will be encrypted and will have information on the current events (which would've been the civil war). The data pads will all have personal accounts from individual people like diaries or messages that they sent out. The bulletin boards will be how we guide the player in the world as well as having widespread messages that the population would've needed/wanted to have and know about. I wanted to have these only legible with the visor ability active not only from a lore standpoint of the visor translating the language, but also to give a little different interaction with this style of information.

These last two information sources also have their own information niches. The data vaults will hold historic information. This will let the player know about the world before the war. The advances, the culture, including the invention of the Reverse Polarity and it's effect on the populous. I was thinking it might be fun to have some of these encrypted and some not, but my lead disagreed, wanting only one source encrypted (The military terminals). The Books of Silica will contain information relating to the religion of the game. While I was thinking of having the player getting a new piece of equipment to read these, my lead would rather put specific jumping puzzles in front of them to make them a more optional goodie, which is fine. I'm thinking I might have the reader be the end point of a puzzle or have the player bring the "book" to a reader in the level to get their information.

I think with these five different deliver methods with their own mechanics and information they deliver will be a good mix of things for the player to discover and feel accomplished finding and learning about the environment. As well, I think it'll help me when I'm writing all the story for the game as I'll have an organization system in place to know where bits of information will be and how the player will access them.