Game design is wild sometimes! In Fist of the Forgotten, I was just trying to do a classic game design maneuver where I effectively trap the player in an area that they can only escape with a new ability. After defeating this boss, the player gains the grapple ability and has crazy mobility, but I didn’t want the player to just go back and wander about the level with no clue how to use it or that they even had it.
I’m also not a fan of heavy handed tutorial text screens that explain things before the player even has a chance to figure them out on their own, so this type of scenario is probably my favorite game design technique. You’ve likely experienced it in a number of games – getting thrown into a pit where the new jump ability is the only way to get out, or maybe you’re trapped in a cave where the only escape is to break the floor with the new heavy attack you unlocked.
It presents the player with a very simple problem and a very simple solution: Just use the new tool you’ve unlocked the way it’s intended, and can teach the player how to use it without a single word.
I was just trying to do that for the grapple ability by placing a room high above the player with a switch to open the doors to escape. The thing with Fist of the Forgotten, though, is that, unlike many games, the player doesn’t have a specific jump height or movement speed. You can build up momentum sliding down slopes and also use ramps to jump higher, and at on point during a development stream, I realized it might be possible to reach that room without that grapple. And after a couple attempts, I realized it wasn’t all that difficult to get up there. But I thought surely I couldn’t get past the rest of the level without the grapple, right? (Wrong.)
Reaching the end of the level was pretty much a guaranteed soft lock. Maybe some speed runners would figure out how to do a no-grapple run, but for the mere mortals playing, they wouldn’t be able to progress, though I was confident it wouldn’t be possible to get past the giant laser without the momentum of the grapple. I was also wrong there.
So then I was faced with a conundrum: I didn’t want to make the beginning area with the grapple too challenging, as players were just starting to learn the mechanic, but the other mobility options in the game made it almost impossible to create easily grappleable areas that were inaccessible even without the grapple.
And then Woland reminded me of another mechanic I had for the grapple. The grapple can grab switches! Using the grapple to remotely grab switches was something I planned to teach the player later on in the game, but it seemed like a perfect solution here. I just needed to create wall with a small gap in front of the switch. Of course I was still concerned players would find a way around this and I didn’t even get to finish my thought when I somehow crouched and punched just right and slipped through the gap. A little player clip addressed that issue.
I do wish every game design problem I’ve run into could be solved this cleanly!