One of the chicken-and-egg problems we’ve been running into when designing environment layouts has been the intersection of art and game mechanics. The backgrounds in a point-and-click adventure game aren’t just there to establish where a conversation is taking place. They support most of the player interactivity in the game, which is what often leads to this tricky negotiation between what an environment should look like and what it should do.
On the visual side of the design process, it’s vital that each backdrop convey the visual themes and implied backstory of the game’s premise. The only way in which players are going to learn about the world in this type of game is through dialog and through background paintings. But on the gameplay side, all sorts of event-driven mechanics need to be taken into consideration. How many entrances are there? Are any other locations visible from this one? Are there any hidden objects, and if so, what’s obscuring them? Are there puzzles later in the game that need foreshadowing early on?
It’s hard to get into specifics without spoiling the game’s storyline, but a few examples spring to mind:
- Bars on the jail cell had to be replaced with polycarbonate glass. It’s a bit of a sci-fi cliché (might as well go all the way, and put all the guards in jumpsuits), but obviously we can’t have a bunch of vertical bars obscuring the clickable items in the room.
- The back of the cell, which was originally just a regular wall, was cut away to reveal a hallway with an equipment room that becomes important later on.
- A palm-scanner and terminal status panel were added at the end of the hallway, to facilitate some early-game conversations about the police server room, which is never directly shown in the game.
It’s a delicate balance to strike. On the one hand, our reliance on rough 3D mockups of the levels allows us to test these changes in context before commissioning final-quality artwork. On the other hand, it wedges an awkward (and lengthy) middle stage in between the visual concepts and the final designs. That said, it’s the best compromise we’ve been able to come up with so far.