[003] Shuffled World Devlog
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Problems with the Clue Maps
Hello! Not much progress the past few weeks. There have been many friends in Tokyo so I've been pretty social lately, which I suppose might be overall better than working on a game, ha ha ha.....
The main thing I want to discuss is a problem that's been on my mind with what I outlined in post 2. The idea was that the Clue Maps would be valid and invalid solutions, and you'd use them to construct your own map. But wait a minute! You could just copy one of the valid clue maps and be done with it!
Hm... well, it might feel like we need to throw everything out. But I was doing research, and someone on Twitter suggested I check out Understand. It's a remarkably challenging puzzle game, but basically every puzzle has 2-4 secret conditions, and you have to experiment with the puzzle to figure out the conditions. It's certainly unique, but I found the process to feel a bit like debugging.
Here's an example...
The two conditions are (iirc) "Start on a circle" and "end on a square". (You have to draw a path, that's your 'answer'). Well, that's pretty easy to figure out, but some of the later solutions are tricky things like "path is a prime number length" or "path divides the grid into a mirror image". The circles on the bottom will turn dark if you've satisfied a particular condition.
The idea it gave me was if you had to combine the conditions of two clues, or you had to exclude something about some clues. If this was the case then there could be an 'satisfied conditions' interface like Understand, and you couldn't just copy the clue maps.
The other idea was to make the clue maps big, but limit how big you can make your map - so that you have to figure out what the important information of the clue maps is.
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However, this brings me back to one other issue on my mind, which is if it would feel frustrating to explore the Shuffled World, and barely fail to construct a valid world (due to RNG, etc). I think it's possible as a point of frustration, but it shouldn't take That long to construct a world, so a few failures is OK. A bigger issue is 'does the clue/key cycle feel repetitive?' Idk, to me it probably would after a few times, and I wonder if it's even worth the effort implementing...
But I think at this point it's worth bringing up that this is a pretty story-focused game - so you might not even need all that many instances of constructing Clue Maps. Further, there can be variations - to find a destination in the Shuffled World, there are all kinds of narrative ways to vary that up. Maybe a character guides you. Maybe you're given a different 'form' of a clue (as a commenter suggests, something like making an adjacent mountain/river room create a waterfall room, which hides a town). Maybe there's something that uses the interface of the map builder and shuffled world keys in a different way. Maybe there's a time where you just try to go as far away from the Shuffled World entrance as possible - etc. It often just takes a slight narrative reframing or restructuring to make something stay fresh long enough (such as Anodyne 2's later areas - although admittedly I feel there were too many levels in Center City Cenote), or in a more repetitive game (Sephonie) it can be enough to stagger things with significant narrative beats.
Mixing up the ways you explore the shuffled world feels good - ultimately I just want to do juuust enough to capture the feeling of "the route from Town A to Town B" not being memorizable. And since the game wouldn't be That long, varying things up - with occasionally some repetition - is probably good enough. I think I'm happy to use this as a base for prototyping but also building out the story.
On The Story
What's the story of this game? Well, a while ago - maybe last year? I had the idea for a short story about a studio of three game developers - one who is older, clearly the lead - dies. He then tasks the two younger developers to bury his ashes in the "most important place to him", which the two deduce as being either - something related to an unfinished game, or something related to some traumatic event. Anyways, I don't know what the ending is, but one of the main themes of that story was planned to think about the ways in which we might reduce someone's desires or 'life narrative' down to some single event that we perceive as being 'extremely traumatic' - how we might reduce someone's complexity to a single, driving event, a cornerstone of their life.
Well anyways I just didn't feel like writing about that theme so it never got written. As time passes, naturally there are a million other story ideas that come up around the Shuffled World idea (one of them being Aloesian Mode, a story which I did write this year, which uses some of the "shuffled world" ideas but instead to explore the process of musical composition in a fantasy setting), but that's a story and didn't utilize the game elements.
Current Story
The current story of Shuffled World still centers around a master (or leader) of these two younger proteges of some sort. The Master has died, and the Proteges are left to carry out his will: to travel to significant places from his life, returning certain objects.
In this fantasy world, towns and settlements are separated by this 'shuffled world' and people can only visit other places by foot, if they know the right way to travel. There is no online or instant communication.
In some ways it's a little akin to the relation of neighborhoods within cities, or discord servers. Finding new places - or having significant connections to them - is technically 'easy' - a matter of clicking a link or taking a taxi - but in practicality you often rely on social knowledge to join.
It's not considered dystopic that the world is separated in this manner - in some ways, it's made it impossible for culture to develop in a more generalized, mainstream manner. However, people still can't help but wonder what life could be like if the paths between communities were widely known and easy to traverse. People hold all sorts of opinions on whether this would be good or bad. This is not a particularly 'real' fantasy world, in fact, it's a bit obsessed about the notion of subcultures and cultural output and progress, perhaps like how everyone in Pokemon might talk about Pokemon, rather than their salaries.
The two proteges set out with some navigational tools, finding different landmarks/settlements and meeting significant people from the Master's lives - collaborators, friends, mentors, lovers, etc. During their journey - and as they traverse the 'shuffled' world, the two consider the implications of the world being 'reconnected', and reasons for both. The two even reconsider their relation to their home settlement, debating back and forth about whether they'd like to move elsewhere.
I'm not really sure what an ending would look like, or if I even want to escalate the stakes to something very big. I could see something working like "Maybe the master had a plan to unite the world" or something like the world has to be permanently separated, but to me those feel less interesting than the proteges' discussions with the Master's connections.
Well, these themes are interesting to me because they remind me a lot of how books, music, art, games, etc, are made. People often cut their teeth or flourish in smaller communities - but when people operate at a larger scale, even though they're reaching a wider audience, they might actually be more isolated from the wide variety of work being made. We can see this at the largest scale as mainstream works continue to entertain, yet in a predictable manner.
I've touched on this in some writing but it's kind of why a lot of games can tend to feel the same - they become more reflective of what might spread widely or sell - a guess at what people like, rather than a particular group of creators' concerns.
I'd like to take that general idea and look at it through a variety of characters/situations. If a world physically can't allow the accrual of fame, but humans live with the knowledge of fame having been a thing, then how do people make meaning for themselves? Would people want to move around a lot, or set down roots somewhere? What would it mean to have a lineage of family or proteges in this world ?Etc...
Comments
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I really like what you’re shooting for here; an exploratory traversal mechanic that has friction (is non trivial to execute) but doesn’t require hours of repetition to complete. I really like the idea of setting out to find your next treasure and just being totally stumped. Really having to mull over all of your information and what you’ve tried until you figure it out.
One thought I have the mapping mode is if it tells you outright when you have a successful map it might take away some of the surprise and joy of finding the treasure through the act of exploring. If you know what the solution is, then execution is just a matter of getting the right RNG. Which, I think learning to use the key mechanics to balance RNG in your favour is a very cool mechanic here, but that being the only execution concern maybe takes away some of the mystery of stumbling upon something you were looking for but not quite expecting. I think if your map was able to tell you like, 90% of how to get there and the last 10% was trial and error, I think that could be quite fun. Adding items to partially reset the world so you don’t have to start each attempt from scratch might also lessen the burden of execution time.
Of course, it’s a matter of what you’re going for. If the mapping sections are very difficult to figure out, then finally getting to execute on them could be a bit exhilarating. Plus the RNG mechanics could lend a feeling of overcoming an environment that is inherently hostile to your goal, and give a sense of challenge and mastery, so it isn’t exactly rote. That said, something about combining the two steps, exploring, learning something, then going back to the drawing board is appealing to me personally. It could give the feeling of learning through active engagement with the world rather then finding the answer through study and hypotheticals. However, the separate 2 step method still involves engagement with the world, since knowing a successful combination of rooms is only half the puzzle! There really are a lot of ways you could experiment with this idea and I think each would create their own specific feeling.
Whoops, I wrote a bunch about the mechanics when I actually meant to comment on the story! I really like some of the themes you brought up here with connection vs isolation. Isolation can bring uniqueness of culture and identity but also judgment of outsiders and the unfamiliar. Connection can allow transience; being able to escape an abusive or unsatisfying place to find somewhere you better belong. But like in our world, it can cause cultural homogeneity, large scale domination of others and oppressive social hierarchies (not that such things don’t also exist on a smaller scale in small communities). I also like the conflict of fame vs obscurity. To be very well known is tantalizing, but comes with the burden of others expectations and assumptions of you. As you say, producing art obscurely for and with a small group of friends and collaborators can produce very unique and personal art. Yet without a way for that art to be shared or seen it can’t be found by those who might connect deeply to it.
In general, connection is what allows us to share ideas and grow as people and artists. I think there’s an interesting dialogue here with our lives online, how being able to navigate it, discover new art, new people, and new connections can be so meaningful. Yet something about those levels of obscurity is part of what makes that traversal meaningful, the fact that there is difference everywhere you go. These are pretty powerful themes I think, and very rich for exploration.
Anyway, I wrote a bit too much, but your blog posts gave me a lot to think about. There’s a lot really interesting things here and I hope you are able to find the time to continue working on it!
Thank you for writing! I appreciate you engaging with the design ideas here. I sort of got distracted with other stuff and stuck again, so I haven't thought much about the design of this project (although the story and themes are always on my mind).
I agree with you in that it'd be nice if a significant part of the game is the 'engagement with the world'... I wonder how to balance that. In my experience I've personally had a hard time in balancing games with two big 'systems' (in this case, mapping and exploration). Either one gets cut or they end up existing a bit independently (e.g. Sephonie's Linking/Platforming) But maybe it's a challenge worth approaching.
It's frustrating to not have many game reference points to go on. The closest thing to the 'trial and error' I can think of is Mu Cartographer - really interesting game, basically it's a procedural world you navigate by twisting strange knobs, and you can find treasure in the noise. https://store.steampowered.com/app/513360/Mu_Cartographer/ Of course, that game is pretty different in design goals from what I have in mind, but it feels like somewhat of a proof of concept that 'experimental exploration' could be fruitful.
Real life has a lot of great analogies with the game, now that I think about it - often google maps is just 90% and the rest is having to improvise based on street/outside conditions, street signs. Paths to a place are full of things that you didn't expect, pleasant surprises... hm.
The idea about having 'partial undo' items is really good, it definitely feels important for the exploration to be open to experimentation, rather than punishing for failure. Sort of like how Mu Cartographer lets you know when you're kinda close to a treasure, and you can keep unadjusting/adjusting knobs as needed.
Your comment also gives me an idea about 'solutions' to maps... sort of inspired by 'closeness' in things like recommendation engines, maybe the path to a treasure merely needs to be 'close' to the ideal solution (the analogy would be like, a game that's a 90% "match" to Anodyne 2). I kind of like that, it might even fit with the theming of the story.
I wonder how the exploration (on a granular basis) would stay engaging, but with a game like Yume Nikki in mind, maybe filling rooms with strange sights and characters is enough? I guess this is a case where overthinking things would lead to perfunctory design (e.g. if it was combat-based, and I had to kill enemies with a Red Weapon to get to a Red Room... etc).
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Thanks for writing your thoughts on the themes! While I plan to use the visual language of 'towns', this very much is a story that's thinking more about subcultures and types creative circles. I'm glad to hear that it sounds resonant so far!
Like you bring up with the internet, I guess this game is quite inspired by the experience of living on the internet.. ending up in strange places with surprising ideas, meeting or observing people with totally different interests and priorities is in general an enriching way to live, I feel. Actually, there's an old story/game idea (that's a partial inspiration for Shuffled World) I had that's basically analogizing discord servers and their relative isolation and connection. The way that 'invite codes' are sort of like these special passwords or tunnels to different 'discord worlds', etc.
Anyways, time will tell if I manage to work on any of this stuff but I'm glad that these posts are interesting as-is!
Thanks for responding, I’m glad my comment gave you some things to think about!
Mu Cartographer is a very cool example, I think part of what makes it work (at least from a distance, having not played it) is the visual spectacle of the generated landscape. Very much feels like someone was playing with landscape generation and thought “How can I make this game?”. I think it adds credence to the question “Would exploration feel engaging just from interesting visuals?”. I’m a huge fan of Yume Nikki and that type of exploration and I think there’s very enjoyable on it’s own to be in a world of the wondrous and unexpected. There is a bit of concern with same rooms appearing too often and loosing their novelty, but I think that could be solved by giving some rooms small pattern requirements (Valley room next to two desert rooms or something like that) so they have “identity” and are a bit more rare, as well as some rooms that are just rare in general. I think ideally with the right amount of variety, repeated rooms could become comfortably familiar, instead of tired.
My gut does still say there could be something more, some way to get that “balance”… It’s a tricky question and might just require some trial and error prototyping (unfortunately time consuming!). Maybe like Mu Cartographer, you could have some sort of sensor that tells you how close you are to completing the pattern. Could give that fun sensation of: “Agh, I’m so close, but where is it!”. And yeah, I like the idea of giving some flexibility on meeting the “correct” solution, would definitely take some strain off of repeating attempts!
Anyway, I love to read about designers’ thought processes so posts like these are very much appreciated. It’s a huge challenge to ‘map’ out (haha) relatively unexplored areas of design, so its really interesting to see how people grapple with those unanswered questions and think about all the possibilities. I wish you luck working on this idea and others!
Thank you! I wrote a new post in this devlog series. Your thoughts were very helpful! Maybe I have something prototypable now.. https://han-tani.itch.io/shuffled-world-codename/devlog/498463/004-shuffled-worl...