Chrono Detective - Part 2

 Yo!

Now that Chrono Detective is wrapped up (for now) I wanted to share some of the thought process behind the finishing touches I put into the level. First things first, take a gander at my updated LDD! 






















I wanted to have a more dedicated finale event, but I ran out of time to script it properly. As it is, there's a placeholder for it, but I don't think it gets the vibes or intensity right. That's one of the things I definitely want to get back to if I have time.

I have here marked all the points of interest where the player can examine the environment to get clues. I think these ended up cool- the story is well paced, I feel, and for an detective game, it's important that the clues are distributed to weave the tale correctly. I think this was a success, and I learned a bit about structuring a player-first narrative like this.

I thought there was a lack of puzzles in my level, so I drew out the cave sequence here and extended the player's escape. Opening the level to the outdoor mining area is a nice change of scenery, and allows different kinds of puzzles. (There's a death pit!) These sorts of puzzles are fun for some people, but I think it'll depend on the genre of the game whether they're worth their weight or not. For me, they're kinda the crux of the 'gameplay', and for what it's worth, it meshes with the story in a novel way, in my opinion.


That being said, I'm not thrilled with the quality of these levels I was able to put out. A lot of them don't actually require a lot of puzzle-solving or problem-solving, the last two puzzles are kinda just going through the motions. At their worst, a few of them can be cheesed or skipped with careful platforming. The coolest puzzle is, sadly, very inconsistent. At their core, it's all a bunch of physics puzzles, which aren't gonna resonate with everyone, sadly! 

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