Valley of Shadow Devlog #2
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Welcome back to the devlog! 2 months, 2 devlogs. So far we are batting a thousand; all my childhood sports coaches would be proud of that analogy.
We've been working hard over the past month, and this is what we have to show for it:
Vault of Force - Floor 3
Fireball Polish & Narrative Puzzles
New Blog Post: How We Make Puzzles
Bonus: Upcoming Playtests
Let's dig in!
Vault of Force - Floor 3
Anthony has completed the third floor of the Vault of Force! It was a herculean task that has taken much longer than either of us expected - but for good reason.
The third floor is a milestone for us. Partway through last year, we started using Miro to collaborate on the Vault layouts & puzzles. It just so happens that I was whiteboxing the third floor of the Vault of Force then. Eager to try out Miro, we went all-in on designing the third floor. We stuffed it to the brim with destructible environments, hidden floppy disks, & winding hallways. For the first time, we could design rooms before implementing them, which gives us a stronger vision for the floor itself.
The previous two floors suffered from a lack of that strong vision, however. They were designed prior to Miro, after all. So after designing the third floor, Anthony went back and redesigned the first and second floors as well. This made floors 1 & 2 more interesting, and it bridged the gap between the pre-Miro-design of the Vault of Light and the Miro-design of the Vault of Force. Rather than a few bland Force floors followed by an intricate third floor, the first two floors ramp up in complexity to meet that of the third floor. The result is a smoother experience.
The "milestone" aspect is that we now know how long it takes to implement such a complex design. We can use that info to plan future deadlines and determine the complexity of individual floors. So not only do we have a great-looking, exciting floor to move through (in my totally unbiased opinion), this was also a great learning experience.
And it wouldn't be an art update without some screenshots.
Fireball Polish & Narrative Puzzles
While Anthony was toiling in the Vault of Force, I was buttoning up the Vault of Fire. I made some major adjustments to the Fireball spell itself, added in all 4 Narrative puzzles, and implemented some testing-inspired changes to existing puzzles!
The Fireball spell changes were few but crucial. For puzzley (& performance) reasons, we only want to allow 1 active fireball at a time. So you shoot a fireball, melt a few things, and then you can "recall" the fireball and restore the things you melted. This used to be 2 separate actions - right-click to cast the fireball, right-click to recall, then right-click to cast again, etc. I had my reasons for this, but in practice it ended up feeling clunky. So now, casting a fireball automatically recalls the existing fireball - it's all one fluid motion. It feels a lot better, and flows a lot quicker!
The 4 Narrative Puzzles are in now as well! These are the most fun puzzles for me to design, because they are totally optional for the player and thus can be as zany or difficult as I'd like. Like the previous vaults, this vault has 4 video games that the narrative puzzles are based on. I try to create puzzles that are closely tied to the source games, so they don’t feel like unrelated puzzles with game-specific artwork slapped on top. For instance, we have a "Harvest Sun" puzzle that involves “growing” crops using the Light spell. I could have made a puzzle where you hit a few buttons in the correct order, but that’s not inspired by the source material.
Here is a sneak peek of one of the puzzles I'm most proud of so far:
New Blog Post: How We Make Puzzles
In case you missed it, I wrote a blog post detailing our current puzzle creation process. In it, I talk about our workflow of Level Design -> Puzzle Design -> Whiteboxing -> Testing & Refinement. I also go over the 3 types of puzzles that have emerged during Valley of Shadow development - Teaching puzzles, Reminder puzzles, and Challenge puzzles. I've already gotten some good feedback that I will use to improve posts like this in the future, and am always open to more suggestions! So if you read it, please let me know what you think.
Bonus: Upcoming Playtests
With the Vault of Force Floor 3 complete, and the Vault of Fire finally playable, we will be expanding our playtesting in the next few weeks. If you're interested in participating, make sure you join our Discord because that's where we'll announce & organize playtesting.
That's it for now. Thanks for reading the devlog, and I'll see you next month!