More Puzzles and Ideas

Of course even though the tutorial area is designed and introduces mechanics, and the boss is designed, it was time I started thinking about to start thinking about what comes next, mostly in terms of puzzles.

I found this a very challenging process, partly because  wanted to push what I had done before, but also because I was having trouble process my general thoughts from day to day with some kind of brain fog which especially affected my work, though of course I still pressed on.

I started with the outside of the castle, knowing what we had in the tutorial area already I thought about how the player would get inside the castle to start with. I am not sure if we're going ahead with having an outside to the castle or if it's going to have any thought to getting inside, nor am I particularly fond of these sketches and nothing about it seemed very original, however there might be something here I can use or take forward.

The sketch on the left involved having a block that you climb up in order to dislodge a wrecking ball, hitting away some rubble so that you can climb back down and progress, entering the side of the castle.

The sketch on the right has a part where you push a block and climb to get over some rubble, then you go to the right of castle and find a key, which unlocks a room around the left of the castle, containing a mechanism to lower the drawbridge and allowing you to progress.

Inspired by a video on Youtube, the Mummy films and our own imagination we wanted to include a Rube Goldberg effect (domino effect). I really liked this idea, so I put together a scene and in it I created different Rube Goldberg machines, some of which were more successful than others. This was fun and I got something out of it, these machines were not too tricky to create, and with our goal of animated landscapes and environments, one of these could fit in very well, especially as part of a puzzle, or maybe even a bit of platforming.

After doing this I decided it was about time we decided what potential mechanics we could have in the game I had a lot of mechanics written down, different potential ideas, sections, puzzles and interactions you could have. So I sat down with Joe and together we ironed them out and cut them down to what we both thought would be practical, fit together and work. The scan and list of the progress we have made with these can be found below.

More thought through/planned puzzles are: Climbing, Warped Navigation (Teleporting), Grappling Hook, Falling Objects & Sand, Strange Items, Not too complex (Support Exploration Feeling), Reward Effort, Switches or similar, puzzles bosses, and Domino Effects.

Other Puzzles: Items - Keys, Lantern, Rope, Fixed Camera if needed, recurring patterns/puzzles, escape (climbing/running), explosions, Wind/Water, and Optical Illusion.

Once we had all of these ideas in place it was time to start experimenting, but i'll come back to that later...