BURYING TREASURE: LEVEL DESIGN FOR COMPETITIVE QUESTING
In NO LOVE LOST, quests are one of the most important design elements! Ensuring that they are clear, easy-to-follow and in-style with the game is not always easy and it takes a creative mind to check all those boxes! Thankfully, we’ve got Olivier on our side, who has bravely taken the helm as NO LOVE LOST’s quest designer and turned the hunt for nectar into a addictively fun adventure.
To help us understand what goes into the design of a quest, here’s a breakdown of how a quest is implemented into the game:
BURYING TREASURE IN DROSERA – CONCEPTING QUESTS ON PAPER
THE DRAFT: There is nothing like good old paper design. Pencil and eraser allow you to draft and iterate quickly!
THE STORY: It’s very rough at first. We try to think of the rough outlines for an encounter we’ve never done before and meditate on how we can go about doing that for NO LOVE LOST.
THE GAMEPLAY: While thinking about what is going on in the quest, we add more details about its layout, the enemies’ formation, strategic cover, objectives, and loot.
The design should convey a believable level layout, while featuring clever usages of gameplay elements to allow for interesting encounters. It must be fun, challenging and forgiving.
MENTAL TESTING: We need to imagine ourselves playing the level (with good spatial thinking). It’s a sort of pre-testing method for very early concepts, to figure out what is missing and what to add.
We try to make sure the feeling is interesting enough before implementing it in 3D!
BREW: You also may want to let any paper concepts sit for a while because you might end up blending in new ideas!
TO CONCLUDE: It’s hard to be 100% original nowadays. We are constantly being influenced by other games that are subconsciously embedded into our brain. This process helps us break out of convention and stay creative!
DESIGNING THE TREASURE MAP – IMPLEMENTING IN 3D
FIND A LOCATION: We need to look for an area in the world that doesn’t have quests yet. Right now, we’re populating the Delta’s area with new adventures, and will soon attack the other new sub-biomes that we recently added.
BUILD THE STRUCTURE: We then build up the caverns, habitats, tunnels, temples, ruins and such from our paper concept into the map with the available produced assets (or using “white boxes” to lay down the volumes that are still undecided).
We often test/adjust the quest to make sure there is enough room for frictionless gameplay. Our environment artist will dress the location once the quest is battle tested.
PLACE THE QUEST ITEMS: Let’s place the mechanical parts of our quest! We place gameplay ingredients according to the planned scenario.
We define a new quest entry and its objectives, then add the enemy spawners and decide what will come out of them. We add the loot chests, ammo boxes, guns and/or med kits to help sustain the fight…then we add the nectar crates and the nectar plants.
The final touch is to try and add in little secrets, or ways to ambush the enemy team!
LEADING THE PLAYER TO REWARD – TESTING THE FUN
YOU CAN NEVER TEST ENOUGH: The quest might seem fine, but it’s often either too difficult, too long or too confusing for other people. Testing and balancing is also paramount as you increase readability and make it just challenging enough. This is why we like as much early feedback as possible.
Luckily, we get daily reports from QA and other workmates highlighting areas for improvement! We also watch streamers and YouTube gameplay videos to analyze the players’ reactions and track down any remaining moments of confusion or frustration.
NEVER-ENDING ITERATION: We are constantly iterating on quests in the game with the goal of maximizing fun and replayability as well as reducing any confusion or frustration. Occasionally we may need to destroy or cut something that doesn’t end up working well enough.
Remember, the second pass is always better!