Last one, then critical analysis, wooh!
I figured I would have to come around to case studies eventually, seeing as my previous logs were completely swamped with notes of my progress. These dev logs have more so me swimming back to the surface of whatever murky mire of mechanics I had going on at the time. Despite this, I still plan on finishing this game after hand-ins, as its essentially the game I’ve always wanted to make, barring a classic J-RPG with intricate storytelling, characters, etc.
So, first case study:
La-Mulana, (2012 Remastered Edition) is an exploration-metroidvania game where the player takes on the role of an archeologist who delves into the titular ruins of La-Mulana. La-Mulana has you exploring vast ruins sprawling with puzzles and monsters, the solution to the former residing in interpreting the clues left behind by civilizations beyond human comprehension. The game has you reading tablets to understand lore left behind by previous civilizations, as well as fighting back hordes of monsters that hold no greater purpose but to stiffle your continuous glorious progress deeper into these nonsensical ruins.
The great thing about La-Mulana is that it completely emulates how an adventurer-archaeologist would feel, to our eyes. No digging in the ground here, nor sir. We put ourselves in the shoes of previous peoples and try to understand the concepts and morals by which they were guided, all the while solving puzzles that pertain specifically to these civilizations. The Giants, the ‘2nd children’ have a different term for “SKY” than the ‘4th children’. And none of this is extra lore, knowing what terms mean what is crucial to progressing through the game, as well as solving the puzzles throughout the ruins.
I wished to emulate this sort of feeling, by creating the sense of ancient ruins and having some kind of log book wherein the player could investigate certain left over ‘landmarks’, and then have these landmarks written down in said journal for later use. Sadly, they’re mostly fluff and less crucial to gameplay than the rest of the game’s mechanics.
Second case study:
Thief the Dark Project (1998) is the grandfather of first person stealth games, the likes of Dishonored and pretty much every ‘stealth’ section you’ve had to play in contemporary first person games. You play as Garrett, a master thief whose sole reason for doing what he does best is so he can pay rent. Sadly for Garrett, and thankfully for us, he gets roped up into a city-scale conflict between two insane factions: one that wants to use a magical artifact to resurrect an ancient deity and return the City to nature (thereby brutally murdering everyone inside), and a zealous group of technology worshipping crusaders that oppose the former.
Thief excells as a stealth game because of its soundscape and sheer level of detail taken into consideration and how it uses sound, line of sight, surface textures and lightning to create the perfect skulking simulator. I had planned on originally making a stealth game for the sake of exploring these mechanics, but thought I did not have sufficient skill, and that it would take some time before I eventually got there. Thus I chose to use it as a case study at first, then as I worked on the game, I would apply stealth-based sections.
Thief has the player make use of various tools and arrows to get through the intricate and detailed levels of each… well level of the game. Water arrows to extinguish fires. Moss arrows to pad sound. Rope arrows to get to higher positions, etc. I sought to use this mechanic and apply it to the game here, however have only gone so far as the rope arrows for now.
Third case study:
Hollow Knight (2018) is one of the most acclaimed and rewarded metroidvania games of this current generation, with a sprawling diverse world filled to the brim with intricate world building and environmental storytelling details, it becomes mind boggling. When one considers all this was made by a team of 2-4 people, and the sheer size of Hallownest (that’s the world you explore in this Metroidvania), its rather mind blowing.
That said, I took much from Hollow Knight for the basic concepts and design of the Silent City, namely some world design rules I observed and detailed in Dev Log 2, which are the rules I plan on sticking by as I go on working on this project. I also took the jump from Hollow Knight, and tried my best with the graphics to convey some kind of greater world as you can see in the screenshot above. Sadly, I don’t think I’ve properly achieved this, as my graphical skills are somewhat lacking.