Design Musings: A World Within a World
September 22nd, 2009Okay, I love games based on exploration. My favorite games are Action-Adventure games, particularity the ones made by Nintendo and Rare for the Nintendo 64. Recently I’ve been thinking about one of my favorite games of that period: Donkey Kong 64.
That game made quite an impression on my younger self, mainly because of the way it hid worlds within worlds, rather than just worlds past worlds. In other words, you weren’t just progressing from one level to another, you were also going deeper into one level, to find a different area nested within it. This is, in my opinion, such a powerful way to reveal content to the player. It makes you feel like you’ve found some place mysterious or special.
Mos of these areas were hidden behind some sort of barrier which you needed a certain character or ability to reach. This just added to this element of mystery. There were many buttons that could only be activated by a certain character with a certain ability. It would be something of a letdown if all of these buttons just made some sort of collectible item available as a prize. No, they rewarded you with more world to explore, and more game to play. And the fact that it was behind a barrier meant that you had all this time to wonder what this hidden place could be. It made it so much more satisfying to finally discover it.
As with my previous design musing, the reason I’ve been thinking about this is because it’s something I’m trying to incorporate into Dadaists 2. I don’t want to go into too many specifics, since I’m trying to keep some secrets about the game, but quite a fair deal of the content of the game will be hidden and under the surface for the player to discover. The player can play through the game, but if they explore more, there are whole other adventures for them to experience.
-Alec (Malec2b)
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