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>>GAME VOICE: For too many years I'd been smothered beneath the surface, blind to the
beauty of Terra.
For my fourth design tour I'd like to discuss Aquaria by Bit Blot.
Aquaria is mostly notable for its excellent audio visual production values and unique,
well developed setting.
In this video, we'll first deconstruct the graphics, and then look at some of its hidden
gameplay features.
The different areas of Aquaria have very different looks, but they're all drawn in the same way,
by layering hundreds of images together. The built in level editor gives me a convenient
way to demonstrate this.
Even the seamless rock walls are drawn with many smaller rock segments and then the bigger
set pieces are carefully placed by hand.
More distant elements are added in the parallax layer, behind the level and in front of the
background gradient, to give more of an illusion of depth.
Even the lighting is added in the same way. Beams of light and blobs of shadow are manipulated
and placed, just like any other object.
Because the background and character images are all drawn in the same way, by the same
artist, Derek Yu, the whole scene comes together with a consistent look.
This method of using freely transformed tiles, instead of using traditional square ones is
only possible with modern graphics hardware, but it's likely to be the future of 2D game
technology.
Aquaria uses 2D skeletal animation, so the characters are divided into component parts,
which are rotated in a hierarchal fashion to form poses.
These poses can be combined into a set of keyframes, which are interpolated to form
the final, smooth animation.
GAME VOICE: Slowly, I awoke... For a moment I had no idea where I was.
This is a powerful technique that gives polished results, but it has a significant limitation
compared to traditional animation. All of the poses have to be completely flat,
this usual is not a problem, but is most obvious when characters turn around.
Audio is the other half of the presentation, and it's also very high quality, with some
excellent songs written and preformed by programmer Alec Holowka.
The audio still holds up even if you turn off the music.
[Booming and pinging sound effects.]
There are also 357 different sound effects which help add background ambience, identify
different enemies, and accentuate actions.
They are all very well done, but there's one that I think could have used more attention
to context. Naija's attack sound is long and soft, but
it's a rapid fire attack.
During a fight, often the sounds are drowned out by a blur of over lapping fire sounds.
[A loud, low boom]
Now I'd like to talk about the hidden features of Aquaria. In the beginning of the game,
there's a brief tutorial that tells you how to move and dash, how to access the map, and
how to sing notes.
However, there are many essential things that it never tells you.
Outside the home cave, all of the save points are well hidden.
But you can still see them as red circles on your minimap.
This seems like a small detail, but the game is not really playable without knowing this.
Without using this feature, you can explore for hours without finding a save point.
And then you die, and have to start all over again.
Many reviews complained you couldn't see parts of the map you've explored.
You can, the game just never tells you how. You can click on sections of the map to highlight
them and see which parts you've explored.
The game also doesn't tell you you can create markers by clicking these little triangles,
And that you have to move them down a bit to be accurate.
This is essential because you keep getting new powers that let you bypass old obstacles,
and it would be impossible to find them again without leaving notes on the map.
>>GAME VOICE: As I sang, I could feel the Verse flowing through me.
>>GAME VOICE: Certain songs stirred the Verse deeply, causing changes in the surrounding
waters.
>>GAME VOICE: The first song I had discovered, would wrap the Verse around me...
>>GAME VOICE: ...Protecting me from environmental dangers.
The spell doesn't protect you against environmental damage, and reflects magic projectiles.
Any kind of physical or environmental hazard will still hurt you.
Also, all of the spells have a numeric hot key.
The shield spell can be cast instantly by pressing '9'.
This is not mentioned anywhere in the game, or even in the control screen.
Similarly, you can hold down the 'R' key to form a whirlpool that sucks all nearby items
towards you. This is really useful, but I didn't figure
this out until about 10 hours in.
Also, you can swim with the keyboard, leaving your mouse free to aim, look or cast spells
independently.
There are many other hidden aspects of Aquaria besides the controls.
Sometimes when you kill big boss characters, all you get is a new outfit.
I found this really disappointing at the time, but later I discovered that these new outfits
have undocumented powers.
For example, this jellyfish costume regenerates your health if it falls below 50%, making
it the most useful item in the game. However, I almost didn't put it on, because
the dead jellyfish is certainly not the most flattening outfit in Naija's wardrobe.
This is the same trap I fall into in all the games I've made, like Black Shades and Lugaru.
I assume that everybody already knows about all the cool features I've put in, and I don't
have to explain them. You have to remember that from the player's
perspective,any thing we don't show them might as well not be in the game.
It's no use making great features if nobody ever finds out about them.
There are a lot of puzzles that make it easy to get stuck.
For example, almost everyone I sent the demo to got stuck at this door here.
There are many things that could go wrong. The player could just swim passed and not
even realise that it's a door. The player could assume that the whirlpool
pattern means that you've to create one. The player could leave the cave and look for
a solution elsewhere and never find it.
Even if the player stumbles across these marking on the wall, there are even more things that
could go wrong. You could forget that these are note markings,
or try and sing that song and forget about it when it doesn't do anything.
The solution to this puzzle seems obvious once you know it, but there are many ways
that an intelligent payer could still miss it, and give up on the game.
Similarly, puzzle solutions that seem like they should work, sometimes don't.
Several times I thought I'd figured out a clever solution to a puzzle, for example by
trapping a glowing fish inside a bubble to light my way.
But it didn't work, because it wasn't the solution that was programmed in.
I also found a recipe for poisoned food, and thought I could feed it to this all devouring
boss, but that didn't work either. I never found a use for this poison recipe,
so I'm not sure why it's in the game.
This is the classic problem in adventure games. The player may not find the intended solution
and may find unintended solutions.
The classic answer to this is to observe play testers trying the game for the first time
to see where they get stuck, and what alternate solutions the find, and provide dialogue queues
to gently guide them back onto the right track.
Like the Myst series, Aquaria gives no feedback like this.
This is certainly a valid design choice, but I think most players won't be able to finish
the game without some kind of walkthrough.
Aquaria is available from bit-blot.com for Windows and Mac and is a unique game that
combines a lot of new ideas. Even if you don't like it, you can learn a
lot by experimenting with the built in modding tools.
If you have any comments about this video, or suggestions for future ones, please let
me know on the Wolfire blog.