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How I Crafted
Environmental Storytelling for Hide the Body
"...I still wanted it to have elements of storytelling. So the main elements in that regard became the environment."
Letting the Surroundings Tell the Story
"The idea of the environmental storytelling then becomes you read into those scenes as to what might have happened..."
"Where as in the case of this, while on the surface it may seem like a typical 'hide the object' type game, I think then the idea becomes: "I don't quite understand what's going on here - all I know is that I'm suddenly under a lot of pressure to complete this objective..."
"The stories you tell yourself are always far more interesting than anything that is being told to you."
"...one person will look at a scene and think: 'Oh yeah, there's no way in hell I had anything to do with this... "
Clever Level Design Under Pressure
"...I didn't want it to engage in any cut scenes or heavy text dialogue..."
"From the mechanics point of view, the game had to be fun - regardless of what story I was trying to tell through it, it's not going to be of any good if the player doesn't feel engaged with it. So for that reason the game suddenly became: How do I keep people engaged on a small level? So that became a time mechanic. So I understood then I needed to just make it so that people would suddenly come under pressure. When they come into a scene they don't have time to think about what they are doing, all they know is 'I have this very clear set of objectives and items to carry out those objectives and I have to go as fast as possible'."
"Now the game is designed to be incredibly frustrating to a certain degree - but not impossible..."
Working With Unity
The Greatest Challenge
"...on the technical side of that - that just became a time balance thing, really."
"So striking that balance of time became the greatest difficulty, but I found by pushing them just to the point where it's nearly impossible - it becomes very much human nature for some reason to want to beat it, no matter how hard it is. You suddenly go: 'Yeah, I need to keep going just until I beat it'. So I think time management was the hardest thing in the levels, so playing with Unity, its timetable is a big help there."
This was How I Crafted Environmental Storytelling for Hide the Body with creator, Dan Kenny.
Follow the link below to learn more about their amazing game.