Let’s get right into the design of a water levels. I’m going to use this level to talk a bit more about teaching mechanics to the player through gameplay, something I admire a whole lot about games like Portal and The Witness. Same warning as last time:
SPOILERS AHEAD. IF YOU ACTUALLY WANT TO PLAY MY GAME, PLAY IT FIRST AND COME BACK TO THIS LATER.
That said, this will be less bad to look at then some other ones, since I’m going to show how I introduce water to the player the first time, and one other detail of the water mechanics I bring up later. I will have more complex puzzles to show off, don’t worry. Here’s a screenshot of the level when starting, and one when completed.
(as always, click to make bigger)
To start the level, the player has to turn the first mirror farthest right. It is intentionally impossible to get to this mirror without falling into the water and learning that you can swim in it. Sounds simple enough to not need to teach, but plenty of games prevent your character from swimming at all, so I figured it was a good starting point. They immediately know that water will break your fall and not hurt you. So, the player moves on to the second mirror on the bottom, and may become a bit confused. The path between them is clearly blocked by tiles, and a straight shot won’t work. Here, the player is pretty likely to discover that the light beams bounce off water by accident, as they try to aim the beam down to get around the blocks. In playtesting, this actually happened to my sister between the first two mirrors, so she was able to learn it even quicker. Additionally, the player has to swim again to reach the third mirror, just to drive the point home that the water can be swam in and that doing so may be necessary. The rest of the level completes itself – point the beam at the top mirror, wall jump up, then point it at the diode and exit. The player now knows basically everything they need to know about water to effectively use it in puzzles.
…except that the water can move up and down. I don’t introduce that wrinkle until the third water level, though, and here’s how that level looks at the start:
The light beam, redirected from above, points at neither of the visible mirrors, and if the player explores a little, they’ll see that getting up there is impossible at the moment. A new object presents itself, however, near the middle of the screen. This is the object to control the height of the water, placed in such a spot that it can’t possibly be missed. It’s the only thing even worth interacting with at the start of the level, so of course the player is going to try it and discover its function.
Small design decisions like these allow me to get away with as little immersion-breaking tutorial text as possible. In the first couple rooms, I give pop-ups for controls, but beyond those and the designed-but-yet-to-be-programmed title screen, no other text is used in game. It was always a design goal for me to allow the player to dig in and think for themselves, and setups like these let me get out of the way as much as possible.
Next week, I’ll be talking about a level with plants in it, and about how the plants function, including a success of lazy design.