SCENES - A Game Design Vocabulary - page 67

a counterclockwise circle that join in the lower middle. In the upper-middle room, shown in

green in Figure 3.31 , the paths divide, giving the player a choice.

Figure 3.31 Layout of two paths (one clockwise, the other counterclockwise) connecting various

rooms.

Figure shows that upper-middle room, where the paths split. At least, this is what that

room originally looked like, in an early version of the game. It's symmetrical because the scene's
role is symmetrical: the player has a choice of entering the left or right path. She enters the
room through the bottom. She has to climb up on one of the ledges at the left or right and then
jump over the nearest electric fence-topped pillar to touch the switch above it. (The electric
fences are dangerous. Hannah will have to return to the previous scene and start again

3.32

if she
lands on one.) The switch opens the left and right exits and closes the path through which she
entered, turning it into solid floor.

So this was the room for a while. But I needed to connect this area—the cavern of catwalks and
one-way doors—with a different area above it, the aforementioned underground city. In the
interest of player mobility, there needed to be a way for the player to pass between these two
areas in either direction. This scene, the upper-middle room, seemed the most logical place for
the player to enter from above, being an intersection between this area's two paths. A connec-
tion here would afford the player the most choices.

I had to create a vertical connection between this room and the one above it. I regretted having
to break the visual symmetry of the scene, which perfectly matched the symmetrical left/right
choices available to the player. What if the broken symmetry was part of this room's apparent
history? A hole in the upper catwalk could be the vertical connection to the above area, and
the presence of the hole could signify a structural decay that destroyed the room's ostensible
original symmetry.