Noise Hunters Devlog 10 - Level Design in the Dark

4 years ago by Noise Hunters (@Noise_hunters)

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Hello [Code_Name: MEVYE] [Location: CLASSIFIED], welcome back!

Today we will discuss how we tackle level design in dark environments.

Level design is key factor in a game's success, you can have the greatest mechanic of all time but if you don't have a level where the player can fully experience it, then there is no game. While developing Noise Hunters we had to keep this in mind, however, we had a twist, the darkness.

As we seen in previous posts, in Noise Hunters we visualise the environment with sound waves and when there is silence, the player can't see anything. Through trial and error, thanks to the play-testing we where capable to define some "guidelines" to follow and create compelling levels.

First, we tried with big open levels that favoured exploration, but this made the players get lost more frequently. This is because, the player would see less objects, thus, having less points of reference to orient themselves. Knowing this, the levels where reduced greatly in size and made a more "corridor" experience and avoiding lost players

Landmarks are a great tool to create points of reference for the player and help them navigate the environment. However, we faced with the same problem of darkness, so we decided to create "landmarks" with sound waves that are not produced by the player. This way the player could see point of interest without the risk of creating noise.

Dynamic environment, as we saw in the piston post, we have elements in the environment that help to draw attention in directions we want the player to look. For example, we position a line of pistons that activate with a delay, this creates a sort of a "line" that points in the direction the player has to go.