Forest Dungeon Gimmick: The Good vs The Annoying

[ZapCannon 1]

The first dungeon of my upcoming project (which I hope to post a demo of soon!) is set in a forest, and I need opinions from this awesome community on the type of puzzles I should employ. I had a few in mind, but let me set the stage (slight spoilers for an unnamed project below):

 

 

 

A party of two, the main character named Ruth and her 'friend' Liam, come across a recently destroyed village while looking for medicine to bring back to their caravan. They find a small girl (Lynessa) crying over her dead mother and take them with her, but as they are headed back monsters appear and attack the party. Ruth and Liam fend off the monsters while Lyn hides; after the battle, Liam holds them off and Ruth takes Lynessa deeper into the forest - in the opposite direction from the caravan. (The plot is more interesting and dramatic than this I promise, this is just a basic outline).

 

Also, Lynessa is a mage, but magic is just a myth until it is rediscovered during the plot. A possible option is revealing she can cast fire during the dungeon, which will come into play into one of my proposed gimmicks below.

 

 

 

Anyways, now Ruth and Lynessa are basically lost in a dark forest and the goal is to get out (to the world map). This is literally 10 minutes after the intro, so the party is level one with default equipment. 

 

I don't want to make it just a standard dungeon crawl, but forest puzzles? Not forest TEMPLE puzzles, just forest puzzles... it's hard to think of any. Here are my attempts:

• It is night, so the party needs to find a lantern to navigate and keep it fueled.
• Small evil plants have grown large, impassible vines over the paths - the player needs to find the "head" (flower) of the plant and use Lynessa's special skill (as outlined in the spoiler tags) to get through. 
• Jumping from trees?

How do you guys feel about these gimmicks, either alone or in a combination? Would they annoy you, or would you enjoy them? Even better: can you suggest any BETTER ones?

 

[RetroExcellent 369]

I am really liking what you have so far, these are some good ideas. A few more I might suggest would be:

 

Shaking bushes, can either contain something useful; a path, an item, or something neutral like a wild animal, or possibly a monster attack. This isn't a super difficult puzzle, but more of a gamble on the players part and adds to the mystery of a dark forest.

 

You can go with an old standard: you have a river and to cross it you must knock down a tree up stream from it for it to form a bridge, but instead of it just magically appearing where you need it, you can require the player to block off where they want the log to stop with rocks first, to make it more realistic. (Within this you could have spots where you can put rocks higher up that lead to items and what not, before removing said rocks and letting it flow to where it is needed.)

 

This last one depends more on if you have random battles or enemies on the screen: You can have trees 'grab' the player and hold them in place if they step too close. In a random battle system this could have a small chance of initiating a battle, and in a enemies on screen system it can hold you so you get attacked.

 

Just a few ideas, hope these are useful.

[Harmill 5]

I'm creating a Forest Dungeon as well, and I was also having difficulty thinking of puzzle ideas to fit the environment. I decided to create the forest as a sort of maze, with seeds/plants placed throughout the forest. There are 3 types of obstacles blocking the Player's path, and there is a type of seed that is used to remove the obstacle. It's not very puzzley, but I guess it's OK for now.

 

I like your idea of having a 'head' plant that must be defeated to remove a blocking plant. Perhaps if you have the plant's main body form a snake-like path for the Player to follow?

[ZapCannon 1]

Shaking bushes, can either contain something useful; a path, an item, or something neutral like a wild animal, or possibly a monster attack. This isn't a super difficult puzzle, but more of a gamble on the players part and adds to the mystery of a dark forest.

 

I really, really like this idea Shaddow! Even if it just ends up being for ambiance, I think it will really fit the setting. The grabby-trees might get used for a return trip to the area.

 

The head plant I think is definitely going in. Each head can serve as a sort of "mini-boss" that all mimic the battle style of the dungeon's real boss, except not as threatening.

[Vincent 27]

This idea's a bit of a stretch, but there's no help in not throwing it out there. Perhaps at one point (after a midboss or something) the forest (whether by the player's actions or even an outside force) catches fire, revealing new paths. It could either be left as an inferno dungeon, or rain conveniently appears right after the path is cleared.

Edited March 29, 2013 by Vincent

[RetroExcellent 369]

While burning the entire forest may be a stretch, it isn't unreasonable to have hidden paths that you can only access by burning or cutting down branches, but if you go with the head plant idea, it kind of already covers hidden paths.

[Bunni89 85]

Hmm.. forest ideas...

Maybe theme them around exploration? Not necessarily stuff where you have to keep backtracking because a new path has opened after you finished a puzzle, but more of a standard maze where you just have to discover loads of hidden gateways. (But maybe with a few anti-frustration features, like perhaps there are three possible ways to get through to the other side, even though there's ten decoy trails.) Examples- hidden holes that you can't see til you stand on that tile and fall in, tunnels inside fallen logs, trees that can be cut down, bushes that can be moved aside to find a passage. (They'd look like any other unmoveable bush unless you clicked on them) It would make for an interesting gameplay style with emphasis on examining everything you find, even if it looks useless at first glance!

Perhaps have a few trick objects that only open under specific conditions? Like if you fight three battles in a room, you end up misfiring a spell and burning a tree, or something. Or maybe there's a leprechaun that only pops out if you have over 100 gold, and will show you a magical gateway if you pay him. These obscure pathways could be used as shortcuts, since it'd probably annoy people if you were REQUIRED to figure out some obscure trick in order to progress. (But maybe have an extra reward at the end if you got through the forest quickly?)

Other ideas! Since you're running around trying to protect a kid, maybe have a theme of monster AVOIDANCE? Still have random battles but have an occasional unwinnable fight against a monster that's too strong, and you have to flee from him throughout the dungeon. Maybe make him appear onscreen so you can run around him, and make it a bit of a minigame- perhaps you have to lure him out because he's blocking a pathway, and then you can jump into the bushes to hide, and take a secret path back to your original position so that you can go through the now-unguarded gate.

Or perhaps make a game about figuring how to get out? Maybe the character is a hunter and can track footprints or animal scents, so you have a skill that can reveal these tracks and then you need to work out which tracks go the right way.

There's a lot of potential and I'd love to see what you come up with in the end! :3

[Chaos_Martin 2]

Also for the torch Idea, how about you make it have fuel, that you need to find dry plants in the forest to keep the torch alight.

[Blindga 144]

An odd idea I remembered from Uru is using fireflies as light.

 

In the game, you can come in contact with a batch of fireflies that will follow you once you do. The fireflies, being bugs, hate water and will disappear if the player falls into any rivers or gets rained on, so you can make the dungeon a sort of water puzzle where you have to avoid touching water to keep you light and navigate the forest.

 

Just a thought.

Edited April 8, 2013 by Blindga

[ZapCannon 1]

I really appreciate all the ideas, guys. I especially enjoy the firefly one, and I think it may end up in the final project if I can stop changing my mind.

 

I have question from here, though: how much gimmick is too much?

 

Let's say, for simplicity, I decide to make the forest a dark dungeon where the player needs a lantern to navigate (I have the lantern currently implemented). On top of that, there is a strong monster that the player is unable to defeat and thus needs to avoid, both by avoiding its sprite on the field map and running if the battle is triggered. Is that in itself too much?

 

But then, consider if on top of the darkness and the monster-in-pursuit, there are vines that block the way until their flower "heads" are defeated, meaning the player needs to avoid the monster while searching for the head to move forward.

 

And consider that on TOP of that, the lantern requires fuel, so there is essentially a time limit placed on the player.

 

Basically, how do you decide when you've given too much for the player to juggle? More things to think about add intensity and complexity, but too much of that make the game frustrating and unfocused. I want to make the dungeon as original and captivating as possible while not looking like I'm trying too hard.

[Bunni89 85]

Depends on whether something is a pressing concern, and how well the points intigrate.

LIke if you use five different time-based puzzles, people are just gonna get confused. But if you use five small scattered non-realtime gimmicks then it's less of a mess. I REALLY wouldn't reccommend using my monster avoidance idea in a place where you also have to mess around with lantern buttons while fleeing o.O It's too much of a multitask and would fit better in a puzzle game. (Or a super hard endgame dungeon- the SMT series often has puzzle overload in its bonus areas, which is why they're only for the toughest. Much better than the bonus dungeon merely having high level foes!)

I'm thinking.. maybe just split the gimmicks up so that they don't all happen at once? One section needs a lantern, one room has a monster but not the lantern, etc. That'd be good because the player gets a lot of variety without having to juggle.

 

Or else just stick to using gimmicks that make sense together. For example maybe the progress could go like so:

* Have to destroy an obvious flowerhead to remove a vine- this is the easy bit that shows people what to do

* Have some hidden pathways that you have to puzzle out

* Now the flowerheads start ending up behind hidden pathways or otherwise disguised (idea: maybe one is underneath a pile of leaves and bursts out only if you stand next to it)

* Now you start getting multiple vines and flowerheads at once, and have to figure out which one opens the right path

* Maybe now a gimmick where if you kill one flowerhead the other one regenerates? so you have to keep splatting em in the right order to navigate around this small area and find the REAL flowerhead that kills both

* Perhaps now we get that lantern so it's harder to navigate

 

Something like that. There's technically a lotta stuff there but it's paced out more like difficulty levels.