Welcome back folks to another fun-filled blog post jam packed with some game dev goodness. You’ll be reading more of my wondrous ramblings today as I take you through some of the stuff we’ve been working on this month. Buckle up!
Jibrill
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Levels, levels and more levels! That is what awaits you in this month’s segment of Jibrill-town. This month we’ll be going on a wondrous journey through the very start, and the very end of the game. So buckle up and get ready to see both ends of the burger. Just the buns if you will.
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The Forest
First off, let’s take a small step back and have a look at the game’s sequence of levels as a whole.
Players will move between levels and the hub as they traverse through the game
As you can (hopefully) see, I’m planning on players ping-ponging between our levels and the hub, with the hub level changing every time they visit. You got to see a whooole lot of level 1 last month, and levels 2 and 3 are still on my to do list for future months. So that leaves our intro, outro and all our different versions of the hub level to dig into today!
Dream Dream Dream Dream Dream Dream
So one thing we really want to be able to do in this game is communicate our narrative and themes to the player by showing them, and not by telling them. I really want there to be some leeway in how players interpret the story, and leave plenty of room for people to draw their own conclusions about the specifics, while still getting a good idea of what the game as a whole is about.
To do this, we’re going to need to start building some kind of visual language we can use to communicate with the player outside of text. We know that doors, for example, are going to be a prominent visual element throughout the game that we can use to explore the player character’s obsession and desire to push themselves to change something that is inexorable. Another thing we’ll have to do is have some kind of colour or object to represent the person the player character is about to lose, that we can use throughout different elements of the game.
Now, that was a whole lot of preamble to explain that we need a space in which we can start establishing these things early on, so that players have time to learn what different symbols and colours mean.
And so, the first area of the game was born.
A nice ominous way to kick off the game
Follow The Yellow Line
We’re starting the game off in a dream sequence, where the player character knows that what they need to fix everything is behind the door.
The door is the key.
Here we’ll be able to shove in plenty of weird effects, colours and sounds to help hit home that obsessive drive to get the door open, and why it’s so important to the player character in the first place.
That huge mass on the left is actually a big ol’ wall!
Next, the player will be dropped into the hub level, and quickly notice some similarities from their dream.
Final sketch of the hub – version 1
The door is the key, but the player’s not yet heavy enough to get it open. I wanted to have an area with the promise of something more that the player can’t quite reach yet, that’s also safe with space for plenty of objects to play around with.
I remember this place from my dreams!
After the player finishes the first level, they’ll notice that things are a little different, and the bridge has gotten a little bit shorter…
Final sketch of the hub – version 2. Notice the bridge has started to get shorter.
They’ll also now be heavy enough to pass the current blocking their access to the entryway to level 2, which we’ve made into a weird, underwater suburban street. More on why that is next month when I’m diving into level 2 (;
Excited to dive into this one more next month!
After level 2, things are starting to get a bit spicy in the hub, with lots of areas missing, and things seeming to be falling apart.
Final sketch of the hub – version 3. Lots of the ground has eroded away.
Now players will be able to trek across the cliffs to find a secret forest hiding the entryway to level 3. Again, more on why a forest, and the specifics of level 3 coming in a future blog.
A forest under the sea
Finally, when players finish level 3 and return to the hub for the last time, nothing is left, but the door.
Final sketch of the hub – version 4. Now all that’s left is the door.
Ronan had a cool idea of having the large stone bridge returned from the depths in big chunks the player has to move in order to get across, so I went ahead and whipped up a quick, janky version for our first pass.
The door is the key
Once the player finally opens the door, they’ll find a seemingly infinite black expanse waiting for them on the other side.
Final sketches of the outro sequence
As they push onwards, they’ll find the world becoming stark as hundreds and hundreds of maw altars start appearing. Finally, at the end of the hall, they find a larger, even heavier door.
Some stark black and white spaces!
They can use the maw altars to gain enough weights to pull it open and travel through. Behind it they’ll find more maw altars, and an even bigger door. Behind that? More altars. More doors. Each larger and heavier than the last. No matter how much the player takes on, or how many obstacles they’re able to overcome, none will stop what is about to happen. Only when players accept that what they’re trying to stop is beyond their control, and leave, do they enter the final stretch of the game.
Final sketches of the end sequence
Here the player character walks through different scenes, remembering fond times they had with their loved one. Each scene they pass through causes a huge spike they’ve taken on from a maw altar to fizzle out, and disappear. In this sequence I really want to hit home that the player character has accepted that this is something they can’t fix. That they’ve resolved to stop obsessing over their inexorable loss, and instead spend the time they have left treasuring their loved one as much as they can. This lets them shed the burdens they’ve taken on, and return to the diving bell for the last time, empty handed.
One of the spaces the player walks through in the end sequence
Cut to black, roll credits. Or that’s the idea anyway! Obviously right now it’s all just drawings and grey boxes, but this will be the emotional zenith of the game, and as such will have to receive more iterating on before it’s ready to roll.
Short and sweet
That’s it for March folks! Not a super varied month for me, but packed to gills nonetheless! If I’m honest, you’ll be getting levels from me almost exclusively for at least the next month and a half, after which I’ll proooobably be mixing it up. Hopefully you got a little more insight into some of the themes we want to explore, and a good look at some of the spaces we’ll be using to explore them!
Thanks again everyone, I look forward to writing to you again next month.
Jibrill
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