EPT1. Princess thanks the mouse,
2. A hard challenge (Those challenge really take a meaning if you are a speed runner). We start to see combination of traps, requiring more precision. The player on the video is not precise and almost glitches his way through.
3. After, the game shows the player a room with a guard, looking at left. This tells the player that he will be coming from that direction in the end. This level starts to be big and a little confusing so the clues are welcome even if they are subconscious.
This is again great genius. The player is already forming an idea of the whole layout of the level or at least few hypothesis that he will quickly refine.
4. ...And the player arrives to the final door. 20 seconds in the level! The player knows that he will be reaching the trigger from the left. From what the game has been doing till this point, the final door trigger might very well be the one on top left.
5. The trigger that opens the top left grid is linked to a small puzzle. The player has to come back to this room and make the tile floor fall so the grid is left open. Let's see further if the game helps the player to that conclusion.
In this case, the player will just run on the top of the trigger. It's good that to this point, not a single grid has stayed open by itself.
6. When the player arrives to the bottom right of the map. There is a climb and a pit. The pit is a small tension creating design that gives a little bit of meaning to the climbing.
7. We arrive in a little bit of what I think a design mistake. The player has been conducted to climb and here you have to go down to do the tile trick from 5.
Now this could have been done by having falling tiles on the roof of the room and a grid to the right, so the player doesn't go looking back.
8. We go through pretty generic game play. The player goes to take a potion, then look down a pitfall, you notice that it gives a hint for a potion. Looking down is not totally useless.
9. Then the next interesting thing is definitely the up-side-down potion. It serves no game mechanical purpose but it tells the player that white particle potions are just strange, not always the same.
Maybe I am missing something. Is the big red potion present if you don't take the up-side-down potion? Then, it would make sense.
10. Also a little, unlikely situation, but still, little trap where you can stay permanently. A small corner with a trigger and a closing grid. The player always should have time to press the trigger and get out, but still, probably the first permanent non-lethal trap... Does the mouse come again if you get stuck there?!
And a clean finish to the level.
A quite long level overall, took 6 minute to our host player. Guards were challenging. There was a little puzzle aspect in the design. The challenges (guards, spikes etc) were almost always combined. The interesting thing is that what we see as challenges are not really hard, they just force the player to be careful... Which is exactly what walking in a dungeon filled with traps about. It's about not rushing, but the time pressure contrast with that. The only thing that is tough is the balance which suffers from the slippery slope. If a player is not good enough, then he will use more time, or commit even more mistakes. Worth case scenario, the player has too little time left to complete the game while he has the skills... So it can be that his defeat was sealed 20 minutes ago.
This is the kind of nice touch that made the old game tough on the player and we nostalgic players miss that from new game. At the same time we would laugh now if a game commits the same mistakes.
The culture of gaming has evolved and some old magic can be reworked in modern games but does any of this come up in games like Spelunky?
Till next time!
