DECONSTRUCTING #002: Level Design Construction of Odallus: The Dark Call

DECONSTRUCTING: Level Design Construction of Odallus: The Dark Call

INTRO

Odallus: The Dark Call (referred as Odallus from now on) is one of my favourite games of late. Like Joymasher’s previous game, Oniken, it’s a true homage – a love letter – to the action platformers of the golden era of the genre, the 8-bit home console/computer era. It has a great gameplay and all around level design, but what really reeled me in, was the high level part of their level design, the way they constructed the main progression in their game.

NOTE: This article has mild spoilers. Nothing, that I personally think will ruin the game for anyone, but still, it’s something I’d like to mention before anyone reads further.

DECONSTRUCTING #001: FIRST LEVEL OF DUKE NUKEM 3D

DECONSTRUCTING: FIRST LEVEL OF DUKE NUKEM 3D

INTRO

The second article is going to be the first in the series where I’m analyzing what makes some feature so good and what makes it work in some particular game(s) , by doing a deconstruction of the feature(s). I’ll start doing this to one of my all-time favorite levels – the very first level of the first episode of Duke Nukem 3D. This is THE level I every now and then play and it’s still fun after all these years, thanks to its great level design. I still remember playing the first episode over and over again - when Duke 3D’s 1^st episode was out as a shareware-demo, before the whole game was available - and speedrunning the episode, especially the first level. And this was before I even knew speedrunning being its own thing. I just wanted to speedrun it and become a God in that level. Levels like this, that make you want to speedrun them and become a master in them, are usually very well designed.

MEANINGFUL DESIGN #001: TWO OR MORE USES PRINCIPLE

INTRO

I believe we all have faced a feature in a game, that just didn’t have that much purpose. Maybe it was some skill or item we’d use once and never again after that – or even worse: not at all. It’s clearly there just for the sake of being a “cool” feature or to justify just some lonesome scenario in the game or just as a plain filler, checking some “we have to make at least 10 different skills” box. Encountering these kind of things have made me wonder how to could we prevent something from feeling like that. Below I’m going to propose a solution for this, which I’ve noticed to be happening with a lot of good and well working game feature design.

As my main example I’m going to use Völgarr the Viking. It’s a game I’ll surely be referencing every now and then thorough my articles. In my books it’s a game that has very well thought out and clear design and it pretty much doesn’t have ANYTHING that doesn’t need to be in that game. Everything is meaningful and has a real purpose, and thus it works as a good example in many cases, this being one of them. I really recommend everyone to give it a try. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I honestly think it’s one of the best action platformers EVER made, as it’s just all around so well designed game.

GAME DESIGN: DECONSTRUCTED STARTS HERE

THE MANIFEST

This blog is about game design conventions and principles I’ve been processing and analyzing a lot in my head lately. I’m not claiming them to be anything revolutional, just some stuff I’ve figured out while learning to be better in game design. I started to feel like I should write these thoughts down, and share them with other people.

When I use some games as an example, I’ll try to use them mostly in a positive manner – what this game made right. IF I use some particular game as a bad example, I sincerely apologize the developers behind that game. My intention is NOT to thrash anyone’s work. I’ll only use a game as a bad example, if it REALLY brings a good point on the table. I know from many years of experience, that in many cases, when something isn’t quite working, there can be so many reasons behind, that don’t have anything to do with the competence of the team. But as said: I’ll try to avoid using any game as a bad example as far as possible.

I personally like to read (and watch) a lot of postmortems/making of articles and development blogs and this I’d like to think as my own contribution. I’ve always liked the thing about game development as an industry, that the communication is quite open – we don’t keep everything with ourselves. Most of us are passionate gamers and when you help someone to make better games, it eventually means, that also YOU will have better games to play. If this blog gives even one person an inspiration or help in their path of becoming a better game designer, my goal is met.

Hope you’ll enjoy reading these. And feel free to re-tweet and share these writings of mine in the social media. :)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I’m the main animator dude at Housemarque, having worked with titles like Outland, Dead Nation, Super Stardust Delta, Furmins and now the up-coming Alienation. Before joining Housemarque back in 2008, I had worked in some more hobby’ish little games with my friends. I’ve started to get more and more interested in game design too, during the past years, which has lead me to start learning game design passionately and to make my own game prototypes. This blog represents only my personal opinions.

I started my gaming passion back in 1985 with Nintendo’s Donkey Kong Jr. Game & Watch, and the addiction was set, followed with C64 and NES. 30 years later I’m still a passionate gamer, who likes pretty much all kinds of genres, and one of the lucky ones, who can say, that “I get paid for doing something I honestly LOVE”.

My initial passion for animation started of course from seeing movies and cartoons made by the great Disney. But the one, that really dragged me deeper was the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which I still watch at least once a year.

-Tomi Kokki