Of Blood and Wine

This is a detailed level design document [LDD] for a game Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

In this blog, I have designed a side quest with a detailed level design doc for the DLC of the game “Blood and Wine”.

Please note, I have used mock images throughout the description of this document.

Let’s Start…

Overview

There is a small town in Toussaint, famous for its classic wine. The wine is distilled by the secret formula run by the Noble family of that town. The wine quality from past few weeks has been very inconsistent. Noble family accuses one of their own couples as the question of inconsistency and deteriorated wine quality haunts the family.

The player plays as Geralt the Witcher who is tasked with helping this couple find the problem of what is going wrong.

Prerequisite

To play this quest, player Must be at least Level 20. The mission level is level 20 i.e. the enemy level will be close to this range of level [Enemies are defined in details ahead]. This quest can be played in Day, Dusk or Night time (No special time requirement).

Duration of this quest is around 10 to 12 minutes.

There are total 2 outcomes in which this quest ends. The outcomes are based on the decision player takes in the quest.

Game reward also defers on how the quest ends and what decision player makes. The rewards and the consequences have been enlisted further in details.

After completing each mini goal in the quest or whenever quest goal updates, the game will be automatically saved. So anywhere during the quest, if the player dies, Geralt will be spawned on the last saved checkpoint.

2D Layout of the level

Area 1 The Town: The town where the player starts the quest.

Area 2 The Wine Cellar: Player heads to the wine cellar for further clues.

 Area 3 The Camp Sight: Player ends up in a camp finding all the solutions.

Brief Level Flow

Detailed Walkthrough

There is a small town in Toussaint which is famous for its perfect blended wine production. One noble family controls the Wine production through a secret formula of blending.

Town Scene: (Area 1 on 2D layout map)

On entering a town, the player meets a couple in trouble who are members of that Noble family. The couple pleads that if they are not helped then they will be disowned by the family.

According to the couple, they have been doing their best in blending perfect wine, but the family accuses them of very poor production. All their family members have lost their faith and trust in them and that the couple needs to gain it back with the respect they deserve.

Poor wine production has also taken a toll on the town’s glory.

Geralt says this is usually not the thing a Witcher deal with, but makes an exception and decides to help anyways saying humans are no less than monsters.

After listening to the problems with wine, player concludes there is something wrong at the place wines is produced and stored for aging.

This triggers the quest and player gets a notification to head to the wine cellar for investigation.

Cellar Scene: (Area 2 on 2D layout map)

This is a pretty old wine cellar and a lot of barrels can be seen there kept for aging. There, the player sees two different divisions of wine distilleries and one common place where all the selected barrels can be seen.

This building is a normal 2 storied cellar. There is one main door to the cellar. The top floor of the cellar however also has an exit door for climbing off the ladder to the ground and go.

Once inside, the player will have to use the Witcher sense to investigate the distiller. Later other parts of the cellar.

The player finds nothing off while investigating the distillery on the ground floor. Player then will access the upper floor. Here, with Witcher Sense, the player finds a group of footprints of the workers on that floor but one distinct human footprint which leads out of the cellar through the ladder.

Player follows that footprints which get out of the cellar from the top floor using the ladder.

Here player finds a torn rag that sticks to a nail of the ladder that leads out of the cellar. Geralt picks the rag up and smells it. This rag will have a distinctive perfume on it.

Player now has to follow this perfume which leads the player to the small camp. Here, the perfume takes player directly to a woman wearing that clothes as the scent on torn part matches with that of the scent of that person.

Camp Scene: Area 3

Player discovers that she is leading a group of men in a camp outside the town. Player now has to go and confront her for what she is doing in the wine cellar, being an outsider.

As Witcher starts confronting this woman of what exactly she does in the wine cellar being an outsider she draws the sword, with that her 10 bandits gather together behind to support her with weapons drawn.

Enemies: There are total 13 enemies including the boss woman spy in all. Breakdown of enemies.

Number of Enemies	Enemy Type	Enemy Level
6	Melee enemies with a sword	Level 14
3	Ranged enemies with bow & Arrow	Level 19
3	Enemies with Shield	Level 17
1	Boss woman	Level 20

Best Strategy to fight: For any player, the best strategy to complete this fight is to go Swords blazing, literally.

1. Use Superior Hanged Man’s Venom Oil on the steel sword for max damage.
2. Use potions enhancing the magic powers.
3. There will be explosive barrels strategically placed in the camp.
4. Try to kill the ranged enemy (archers) first and go for shielded enemies last with bombing etc.

Here the player has to fight and kill all the bandits. The combat will be in such a way that all the bandits protect their boss, so to reach her, the player needs to kill all the bandits first.

There is a defined combat area. This is an area which player will not be able to leave once the combat starts.

After all bandits are killed, she puts her sword down citing no one is left to support. She confesses that she is a spy from other kingdom & came here to destroy the glory of this town by adulterating the wine.

She then tries to bribe the Witcher and promises a hefty reward of 50% of what she gets and nothing more than that.

Here now the player has to decide one of the 2 things. Each decision has a different consequence and reward

1. To imprison the spy, take her to town and save the couple in the town from being disowned.
2. Either to let go the spy, spare her life and keep the 50% of the share.

If the player chooses Option A, the following happens:

A cutscene plays where members of the Noble Family have gathered with the couple. Witcher hands over the spy to them with a proof that she was adulterating the wine and even destroying family relations.

Consequence: The spy gets imprisoned for a lifetime in that town.

Reward: Noble family gifts the player a house right in the town. Player also gets Experience points 50. This house becomes safehouse for the player in the game.

If the player chooses Option B, the following happens:

Consequence: The cutscene plays, where all come to know the wife in the couple could not take anymore and has hanged herself. This completely breaks the man and he hurls curses at Witcher and blames him for her death and for not helping. Also, the town disowns the person.

Reward: For this player gets 4000 Crowns and Experience points 50.

Quest fail scenario:

If the player leaves the combat area only then the quest will fail.

Inference:

This quest makes the player take a tough call and face the consequences of the decisions player makes.  The Game makes the player feel very bad about how wrong the decision was and how it had a grave consequence on the two lives and a family just for accepting the bribe. Inversely player gets a good reward.

Another way the game plays is, the player ends up getting a cozy property and good reputation in town.

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Thanks for reading this. I hope you really enjoyed reading (and playing in mind) this small side quest. Let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions on this.

Game Developers Vs. Game Players

The gaming industry is a big huge world. It has two very important elements, the suppliers and the consumers. The suppliers that are Game developers, study their audience and make a product that is based on some data estimating what would work and what wouldn’t. These calculations and estimations are very important as they highly impact the future of the product, the game.

There is a very special relationship between that of the Developers and Gamers. Developers always are committed to giving their best to please their audience trying to keep them awestruck and curious, keeping them wanting for more. This is the reason, seldom it happens that players don’t like a game, or they think what they have purchased is a complete disaster.

The game Concept is God in this business as it defines the paradigm of every single aspect used for creating it. It’s the whole base where empire gets built for players to experience it. The creators have to go an extra mile so that they can give full justice to the concept of the game. To inflict the required emotion among the gamers is what really matters as emotions are how the designers communicate with the players. It gives kind of an internal satisfaction for designers when this tremendous hard work put into it is appreciated.

Last weekend I finished playing the game “Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice”. For a game, I think it is simply fantastic. It can’t really be explained in words, you need to play it to experience how game addresses and deals with the medical condition of psychosis. The game gives players a tour of dark horror and real-life experience of this mental condition.

For gameplay, Hellblade had two important elements in it for progression, combat and Puzzle solving. The game relies on old-school combat tactics of a block, parry, light and heavy attack with sword and a classic puzzle solving scenarios of detecting patterns in the environment for progression. So before playing the game, I couldn’t help but hear many gamers were truly happy with the combat, however not many were pleased with the puzzle solving style. Typical feedback was that puzzles were very shallow and did not blend well with the game style. I am yet to research why gamers might think so, but on my first gameplay, I couldn’t judge the game that way.

What my primary thinking is that not many people know about this mental state. Most players had intentions of just pure combat like every other game with a sword and shield basically offers.

I was literally awestruck with the depth of research developers at Ninja Theory have put into to bring this dark experience closest to reality. In a vlog on their website, they have had several mentions that the pattern recognition we see in-game is one of the daily problems the patients of psychosis suffer from. The protagonist of the game, Senua too suffers from this problem and that’s the reason these puzzles totally make sense. Most gamers are not aware of this fact that if something is there in a game, developers surely must have put a lot of thought for it. The pattern solving puzzles put in the game now makes complete sense of the WHY it is really there in the game. Most reviews heavily criticized this puzzle solving game mechanic saying the puzzle is not a good fit and does not really blend with other combat mechanics present in the game.

While I do support the developers for their amazing work, I somewhat feel we can’t really control what exactly player wants from the game. This pursuit of perfection needs different angles of proper thinking of what majority players may desire out of the product we are selling them. Some players may simply love the amazing hardcore combat and may expect more out of it, while on the other hand, many would like the patterns finding puzzles in the environment.

My views on this are currently neutral for players as well as the developers. Due to the lack of knowledge that people suffering through psychosis have this kind of problems may be the reason many gamers got their own different perspectives about the game. I won’t blame the players here to expect something like this from the game, but players also need to at least try to understand the intentions of the developers of what they exactly want to convey. This is like while playing Assassin’s Creed game, we really dig deep to find out the history of Templars. I bet most of us even tried to read and understand the information what game hasn’t offered about Templars!

On the other hand, while developing a game its important and part of the job we do all the research work and dive deep into the subject so as to know almost everything and make sure no part is left unturned in it. But at the same time, we also need to find the easiest and most interesting way to convey our hard research work to the gamers. We as developers need to understand that what developers have spent so much time in “studying” may be a completely new subject for players as they perhaps may be touching the subject for the very first time. The learning curve, therefore, plays a very important part here in the game design aspect. The deeper players understand the core concept, the more developers are successful in justifying the concept of the game. It does happen sometimes that we have a great concept, a solid research behind it, but the mediocre presentation to an audience which makes it difficult or very alien for them to cope with.

Well, these points discussed are not universal and may not fit aptly for all kind of concepts, but you’ll get the jest of what I want to convey.

What happened with Hellblade is perhaps a pure misunderstanding between the developers and gamers. The convention was apt but the learning curve and information of “why are we doing what we are doing in the game” could definitely have been better.

Developers also managed to trick players and grab attention with a great concept of “Permanent Death” in the game. Many gamers admit having fallen for it. Yeah, it is a part of the excitement and helps you keep you on the edge of your seats while playing. Now was it really implemented or just a hoax will remain a secret for now.

I would definitely recommend trying out this very different experience of stepping into the shoes of victims of Psychosis. The sounds and audio techniques used are hands down one of the best till date.

Thanks for reading my speculations on the Game! I’d like to hear your thoughts on it.

The “empty retreat” problem in Open world games!

Open world adventures are one of my favorite game types. I like talking about RPGs whenever I get a chance. Open world games always tap into the essence of human tendency of exploration and discovery of new things. The curiosity drives and makes us push the bounds and keep getting more knowledge of what is alien.

This case is also true with the games having “open world” world element in them. Exploration is the main ingredient of many of the spices we see in adventure games. Different games we see have radical approaches of constructing a world which in turn changes a face of the game which is presented to the player.

Most of these open world games contain secret dungeons and caves to be explored, which brings us to the point of what this article is about. The designers put a lot of effort into making a good level which will be gripping and engaging throughout the session of gameplay. But there is sometimes a problem in a proper approach of the implementation.

A couple of weeks before nostalgia kicked in and I was playing Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, the great old times. If you have played the game, you will know there are hidden life upgrades in this game which you can get through a secret passage to upgrade your health. That time while playing typically these life upgrade levels I felt like addressing this problem. This issue can be called a problem of “empty retreat”.

To know this better let’s consider a scenario:

You are playing a game in which you happen to explore the mystical caves. These caves are full of puzzle paths, which unlock if you solve the environmental challenges presented to you. You have to solve these tricky puzzles and make your way to end. While on your way, you even meet a lot of minions guarding these caves. You have to hack and slash, full action packed and make the way till you reach the dead end. Seems pretty interesting till here, right?

Purpose:

Now, this can be anything. Say you are going to get a hard rugged armor and a sword with high damage points or any other collectible like a chest of money or maybe a health upgrade, damn it can be anything.

Most people will play it for the love of exploration and/or solving these interesting puzzles as it is their forte.

Okay, you now successfully reach the dead end, and your goal is met. The problem typically starts from here. The action-packed adventure you had till now, is there until you reach the objective which is getting to end where it is not further explorable. When you reach there, you now have to traverse all the way back to carry on your adventure. This is really very very boring and I personally feel players may simply lose the grip of engagement. This also will have a negative impact on the pacing of the gameplay.

Many times, this exploring a cave, a dungeon or any underground tunnels does not come under the main story mission, but just a side quest. So this means players have to explore this leaving their normal route of story progression. If this cave or whatever is small, backtracking is fine but what if it is a really long way? Player has to return back from the dead-end point where everything (meaning minions and all) is cleared and nothing interesting to be done or solved on the way back.

How do games solve this problem:

Here in case of Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, when we have to get health upgrade, observe how we go through the series of obstacles by dodging all the blades and traps. After we finally reach the end and get it, we just have to pretty much traverse back with nothing really left to do. All the traps magically disappear and we have to go back to the point where we started. Typically in this game, the distance, fortunately, is not too much to travel. But if it were the case, it would surely have taken a toll on the pacing of the game.

Let’s see how other games provide a solution to this problem:

You will see a similar situation in the Assassin’s Creed 2 game. When we visit the catacombs, we get challenged by a series of action puzzle. Ones when you finally reach your goal and interact it, a secret door opens.

Observe here how the game tries to solve the problem of backtracking. As soon as we get the collectible, a secret door opens, which directly shoots us to the outside world where we can further continue our adventure.

This is fine as far as a solution to our problem is concerned, it is kind of good but there is a feeling of missing out something. This doesn’t really give the sense of completion, or we can say reduces it by 30%. This I think may happen because we don’t see the entry door again. We exit from the different portal, hence have a loop missing here, which leads to a feeling of a reduced sense of completion. I will further explain this but first, let’s see another better option.

The apt solution, in my opinion, is provided by the game Witcher 2: Assassins of the King.

If you’ve played it, you’ll definitely remember this mission “The Mines of Vergen” in the dwarf’s town.

Let me show you the map to have a clear idea about it.

The layout of Mines of Vergen

All the red crosses you see in the map are the dead ends. The area is pretty big and the player has to cover a lot of distance going in and then traversing back.

I won’t explain the mission here. My point here is, ones we are done with the mission inside these mines, we are pretty much left with nothing, literally. All the monsters slashed, all collectibles collected. Now, all we have to do is traverse back to the door.

Here the game gives us the option to either traverse the area or just poof back to the entrance. This is a good way to deal with the problem. If you like to explore, the game gives you the freedom to do so. If not, simply fast travel out! This seems a good way as the level of independence to the player is more here.

Though the third option is the better in approaching this problem, I feel designers still could have done it better. If we observe the map of the mines carefully, we can notice that this level is pretty much circular. Now all they had to do is arrange the events in such a way that it loops around circularly. In this way, the player starts at the gates and eventually ends at the same gate. Thus it gives a proper sense of completion.

This I believe could have been a better solution than the present. To explain it properly, let’s take our daily life example. Our goal here is to run some errands.

We open the door of our home, step into the outside world, get the job done and get back home. This gives us a sense of completion.

Now consider a scenario where after your job is done and poof, u disappear from the market and emerge directly in the home where you started. How does it feel?

Now consider another scenario where you are done with what needs to be done, but now, from the market, you get in the door and end up appearing in neighbor’s home! Does it give the feel of completion or closure?

This problem is very easy to solve yet some games still fail to address it. There are many ways it can be approached. But taking into mind the scenarios of the game, designers need iterate a lot until it gives an apt impression of closure. A clever level design, wise placement of events in the world and many other factors can work like a charm and solve the issue.

I hope you enjoyed the read. Please let me know your take on this. Thank you very much for taking out time to read this. See you next time.

How can be Fantasy Game Designing done in Better way

We in game development field have always heard of this one well-worn line “The game is all about the experience you want to give to the player”. But actually while developing a game we sometimes get drifted so much inflow that we exactly miss out the point of “experience” part. Fantasy games are no exception to this kind where we sometimes fail to deliver a complete experience that is intended.

Almost every gamer I have met has a dream and own version of a fantasy game they have on their mind. This fantasy game designing is so awesome that every budding and even experienced game designers have at least ones in their life would have thought of making a fantasy game, or at least got inspired from one. So today let’s discuss in detail about how can we design a fantasy game in a better way.

Fantasy game has many fundamental aspects. It safe to say that if we balance these aspects perfectly, we get a well balanced game!

• Game System– mechanics, crafting system
• Game theme– art, audio, narrative.
• Story– lore, Mystery, challenges and uncertainty of the outcomes.
• Gameplay– Progression, Space, goals and rules to roll.

Fantasy is one of the most important genres in the gaming world. It gives the player actual feel that you are living and are part of that world. When people get bored of their normal life doing all normal things, fantasy empowers them to live a completely different life in a different world. Therefore selecting a proper theme for our game is very important because it is this very world where players are going to live in.

One very important point I feel is that just because our game has some swords and hefty armor in it doesn’t give a game “feel” of epic war game or just because we have some shattered environment with cracked buildings in it, doesn’t ensure it as an apocalypse survival game. The game should have proper congruent mechanics, gameplay and progression so that it doesn’t lose the equilibrium.

To achieve this, the game designers have got a big task to do:

1. Understand your fantasy that you are presenting to the world. Be very clear about the vision.
2. Once all the ideas are clear from the design perspective, now we have to convey these ideas to all rest of the team. Make sure the artists, programmers, sound engineers and whole team all are on the same page as you.
3. Discuss with programmers and have an apt set of mechanics which perfectly counterpart the world you create and enhance the experience.

We all have had experience of great games where mechanics fit aptly according to the environment. Now take an example of Assassin’s Creed series on one hand and Prince of Persia on other. Both games use their own mechanics in distinctive ways in their respective worlds. Now just interchange their mechanics and see what happens. I won’t say it’ll be a disaster, but it will lack the right “feel”. I guess you get my point here, exactly where I am going!

We need to do a proper plan of what exactly we want the player to experience in the game. Find the essence and get to the little details of it. Scheme a proper progression for immersion factor. If the game has a big world, the player will eventually explore it. We need to make sure the player should have some purpose, just to avoid aimless wandering followed by boredom. When I say it, I remember the game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It got really boring sometimes to reach your objective. Exploring any world is fun but only for the first few times. Later when everything is revealed, there is no new thing to discover, it becomes pretty repetitive. So if we have a proper aim for players, they will explore the world and even notice the beautiful environment. When we form the balance in mechanics and world, we can be sure about the player having a good time.

If everything is at its right place, like mechanics, game elements etc. the game runs butter smooth. But we have to remember one thing here, if we miss something, it gets noticed by the players. Maybe not very strongly but subtly they do note it. This is sometimes a major cause we are not able to deliver intended experience.

I have seen many games where it teaches players a lot of mechanics. Somehow later in the game, the full segment of all the taught mechanics is not used to its fullest. The player keeps learning new things half of the game but then the game can be completed anyhow by using basic mechanics. What is the point of teaching player all these things which player may or may not use to the game? It just increases ambiguity and even a hardship for the programmers followed by animators and the list goes on. Every tactic, every skill we teach player should have some or the other intention. My point here is, gamers may get busy in learning things for a long time than to experience the beautiful world which is created for them to enjoy and here we miss their involvement in the game.

When we see a fantasy game we have a lot of things to take care of. Many important things like the world, the theme of the game, narrative, story that binds everything, character (including intractable and non-intractable), audio, the progression of a player. Every aspect needs your focus on details so it gets all elements right in line. Every damn thing deserves proper love and attention of the designer, as for any of these gets imbalanced, it may kill the whole game. We certainly don’t want to have a mole in our game when have to achieve beautiful seamless experience.

I personally feel that the theme, mechanics are not that substantial while making an intractable fantasy to come alive. Don’t get me all wrong, these factors certainly are important but priority wise, it is the very first, pre-production stage of the game that deserves the most attention. The designers need to think of the fantasy all profoundly and clearly, analyze it and only then we can go ahead and have the right theme and the mechanics for it. This will also make sure that it meets our initial idea and chances of mismatch become negligible.

Most of the time what I think happens is, we concentrate more on making good mechanics and awesome artwork, which is not wrong by the way, but all preference should be rightly set. Right here, we fail to understand and have a clear idea of what exactly we are trying to achieve. This is exactly where the problem starts. Designers think of something, convey something else to artists and from there goes on the domino effect. We need to find that very fundamental essence which conveys the experience not only to our end gamer but also to the team who is going to actually mold it and this is the reason, scrutiny of details is a must.

What can be done to achieve it??

Well, we need to get to the specifics. Just merely saying we are making a war game, just by adding some castles and huge armies don’t make it live up to the mark of a war game. We have to research a lot. Go deeper and deeper. Try and get to the level where you will be distinguished from what knowledge others have on a particular subject you are researching. Study all current games from the analytical point of view. Watch out what things work in the game and why they do or why they don’t.

Study of demographics is must while making these kinds of games. Look for what kind of audience will exactly percept your game and what will make them gravitate to it. Focus on those little elements.

The online critics and the reviews available are the best friends of the designers at this stage. They give the clear idea what a game missed or what common mistakes are pointed out by most reviewers. In this way, we can find the weak spot and work on reinforcing it so as to avoid these errors.

Break down the game into molecules. This perhaps gives the clear idea of what your game is. It is never a single theme or single idea we work on, but probably the whole bunch of ideas that makes it better. Break them all down. For example, take the RPG game Witcher 2. It contains action, adventure, elves, dwarves, magic, creatures, monsters, ghosts and what not. But all the things blend very properly and are bounded through a story to give you a unified experience of awesomeness.

Ones we are done with finalizing the idea, think the most effective way of delivering it. Check for exactly what we are conveying gamers here. Is it just a world experience, like that of Journey game, or is it the experience of an individual’s story in the world, like that of Witcher 2 or say war game like Battlefield. This can be decided by what player is doing in-game, only lives in the created world or is the world shaping on the choices made by the player.

Well, I must admit one thing here though, all these thoughts are easier said than done. I absolutely know that while working within the deadlines, some of the things get overlooked and it is inevitable. However, at least knowing them and keeping all points in mind is battle half won. So if we know how to proceed, we will probably make fewer mistakes thus getting closer to perfection. If we are able to do at least 70-80% of these points, it is sure to raise the bar towards par excellence.

We as designers need to find and strike that perfect chord of player’s sentiments so as to keep them immersed, engaged and entertained throughout the game.

Thank you very much for your time. I hope you had a good read. If you feel I missed some points, please let me know in the comments below. I would love to hear your suggestions on it. See you next time!!