Echolocation Room
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During the second sprint Anouk designed a puzzle room mostly on her own. It was pretty good for someone that just started out with puzzle design, however some parts of the room would be hard to translate to an actual networking experience. For example there was a timing-based puzzle that would be really frustrating with our current networking latency.
After much thought the team came to the conclusion that a puzzle room wasn't a good fit for this mechanic, and while it's always sad to see designs being scraped, I still think that it was a good designing exercise for Anouk atleast. Some of the original room interactions will be used in our third room, that will (probably) be focused on world interactions triggered by the user's voice.
Because our last room was only designed by one person it conflicted with some other team members their views. That's why we decided to create the redesign of the room with 3 people (Anouk, Laura and me).
Laura felt like it would help us if we tried out her tactics on deciding on a visual style, so we started with that. We looked on Pinterest and other sites for images that were related to the overall art style and pasted them in a shared google document. I felt like we took way too much time doing that, but I also noticed that Laura really needed that time, so I let it go.
When we had a good amount of images we printed them out and hung them on the wall in our little cubicle to make our room a bit more inspirational.
After discussing the room for a day we came up with the following:
We wanted an experience where users navigated over a path with some side rooms, in each of those side room was an optional interaction for the user to engage with. At the end of the main path was a megaphone and when the user talks through it they will be able to see the entire level that they crossed. The end of the level also had a tall object that would generate a sound every x seconds. That sound would travel over the whole level, acting as a lighthouse.
Before we showed it to the other team members, this was the idea we came up with:
Starting area: The players begin in a linear area where they can only move in one direction. The starting area is slightly lit by some ripples (for example some flies flying around), so the players have a “safe” environment to learn the walking mechanic in. The players also need to figure out that they can create ripples in this area. Bouncing balls in the main hall.
General area: After the players leave the starting area they follow the main route. On the main route they’ll experience several beautiful sights with their echolocation. They also get to interact with the environment by picking up and throwing items. Whenever they hit something it will make a sound and ripples.
Side areas: On some spots next to the main route there are small side areas. Before entering the side areas there will be a visual indication that there will be a side area. This visual indication will be a group of fireflies that give an external light source. In these side areas the players will find short, interesting interactions. An example would be bubbles that vibrate whenever the player talks, and if they make a constant sound for 1 second (?) they’ll break. Glass weeping willow (treurwilg) that makes a sound when you interact with it/when wind blows.
The End: The end will have a megaphone that will be aimed at the entire level, when the player speaks through the microphone their voice will be amplified. This pulse travels through the entire level. This object will be like an audio version of a lighthouse. The end will also feature a combination of all the side room sound mechanics that forms an attractive/luring melody.
After the three of us were done with the design we showed it to our two other team members, Johnathan and Tirso. They seemed to be onboard with the idea of an experience instead of the previous puzzle room idea. However the thought that it would be a good idea to make the experience an open space, instead of the linear path that we have now. We thought that was a good idea so we iterated on our level design and implemented that. I made a quick sketch of what the map could look like, and Laura worked it out a bit further.
This is what our final iteration of the echocave looked like.
