Noise Hunters Devlog 16 - Puzzle vs Encounter

4 years ago by Noise Hunters (@Noise_hunters)

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

Today we will see how we balance puzzle and encounter situations in Noise Hunters!

Through development Noise Hunters shifted to be a smaller and closed experience. In such games the flow of gameplay has to be measured perfectly so the player doesn't frustrated o bored. With the mechanics available in Noise Hunters, we have to main tools to use: Puzzles & Encounters.

The Puzzles mainly consist on navigation and exploration, in which the player has to find the correct path to follow to reach the main objective or the next part of the level. Also, this puzzles can be mixed with enemies, creating threats to the player and keep him hooked.

The Encounters are mostly self explanatory, situations involved with the player and enemies, in which the player has to figure out in how to tackle the different situations without being killed. You could, technically, call encounters another type of puzzle with enemies involved, however in Noise Hunters, we have to separate them.

With this tools, we cannot just put puzzles and encounters without reason. Why? This is linked with the flow of gameplay, mentioned before. For example if you make a section with constant puzzles, the player will get bored and will lose the sense of danger because of the lack of threats, such as enemies and vice versa, too many encounters with enemies and the player will grow tired with excessive tension.

The design of this flow of gameplay is similar to the ride of a roller-coaster, there is a build up to a big drop and then a brief rest just to surprise again with another drop bigger than the last one. Noise Hunters being a game with elements of terror, we must keep the player fearing the encounter with an enemy but not constantly "spam" them, for this we use the puzzles as a "rest" in which the player can catch his breath and continue.

As the game advances, the encounter and puzzles start to mix between them as a natural progression, because the player would have gain knowledge on how to solve certain situations, so by mixing we challenge the player to solve more difficult situations. We have to be careful in this use of encounters, we don't want to reveal the "mystery" surrounding the enemies, if this is revealed , the player will lose that terror it had with the enemies. However this problem is also linked with the balancing of other mechanics in addition to the Puzzle vs Encounter. This, we'll explain in future posts, so stay tuned!