Hi everyone!
In this DevLog we’ll continue talking about the game design of Ringlorn Saga.
Please keep in mind that this post will share some information about the inner workings of this game, so if you want to go in blind, consider reading this post after playing the game.
World Design
Since the beginning, we knew that we wanted to feature an open world, but it provided its own sets of challenges, such as the world size and content density. If the world ended up being too large, the content density might end up not being high enough to work well with our plan to make the player’s curiosity the main beacon throughout the campaign.
That’s why we’ve decided to look at our main source of inspiration (Hydlide) and use the screen-based world structure and settle on the 5x5 world size for the overworld and the underground area and made the world wrap around itself to tease players with key locations, but create natural obstacles in reaching them. Then, we designed key areas of various sizes, placed them across the world world, and represented them via miniatures on the world map.
This ended up being a nice compromise between the world size and density, as the world never felt too big to the point it takes forever to reach an area that’s teasing you from across the river, yet it allowed for tense dungeoneering experiences through key areas.
We’ve also decided to spawn new enemy types on the world map based on the player level to ensure that the player faces new challenges even if they get lost, and use fixed enemy rosters for dungeons to create the desired difficulty for this area. This eliminated the need to implement easy modes, as the player could always level up a bit on the world map if they found the next story dungeon too challenging.
Scenario Design
Due to the small scope of this project, we’ve decided to settle with a linear story structure, but keep the design as non-linear as possible — instead of running from Point A to Point B in a defined straight line and enjoying a cutscene between each run, your curiosity is your main guide through the game.
This meant that there was little to no space for lore dumps for the sake of lore dumps, and the line between the “main” and “side” content should be either blurred or erased completely. Almost every line of dialogue that contains a bit of lore should lead you somewhere if you decide to look into it, help you reach your next goal, or provide additional context for your actions.
It may seem counter-intuitive at first, as we didn’t want to spell out the exact actions that players should take to reach their objective, but testing showed that some people found these leads easy to follow, while others took longer to figure them out, but found them very rewarding when they did. In both cases, we’ve noticed that testers were surprised that the lines they assumed to be pure flavor text carried actual substance in the game itself.
In the next DevLog, we’ll talk about the technical aspects and tools used to create this game. If there’s anything you want to see in the next DevLog, please let us know.