Level Design

Challenge

In Obscrete, the mechanic is that by pointing at a trigger, you can activate and deactivate objects. One trigger will automatically be deactivated if you activate another. These objects are invisible and intangible while inactive. The plan was that out of our 6 levels, this level would be the second to last one, with all our main mechanics already introduced, namely also the parkour aspect.

Our second main mechanic was the ability to change the players’ gravitation (more on that under “Programming”) This level was supposed to make the player understand that this can help them plan and strategize on which gravitational pull to gather what kinds of information.

Moreover, we were already settled on having pentagonal grounds for every level. The reason for this is our dodecahedral room in which all our levels take place, with gravity changing multiple times between as well as within levels.

Workflow

I quickly realized that I could achieve such a knowledge-based challenge by making a labyrinth. A player would have to think of how to get to their goal from outside the labyrinth itself before actually engaging with it. I designed the entire labyrinth by hand, and the digital execution worked without unexpected hiccups.

Solution

In order to strengthen the level’s core feature of interacting with it from inside and outside, I established that all triggers would only be usable from outside the labyrinth, giving the player a choice before entering it.

I decided that the number of triggers was 3 to ensure an adequate level of challenge.

Most importantly, the final design included a new way of using a labyrinth. Approximately halfway through the level, you were forced to make an unexpected choice. Namely, to climb on top of the walls that would previously hinder you. The most interesting part about this was that all the (de-)activatable objects that would previously stand in your way were now a new path. Whether the player would find this part out while learning the labyrinth’s ins and outs from above or from within, it was a difficult challenge to surmount without planning on which triggers to have to activate at which point.

This prompted another challenge to me: I need the player to not have any triggers active whenever they reach the top of a wall. The solution to this problem is not central to the labyrinth’s layout, however.