The hero is sprinting down a corridor... Behind him, we see a flash of a horrid, alien-looking creature. He reaches the closed door in a desperate scramble.. Hits it hard.. But it does not yield.. He looks over and in a moment of tense dread, realises the door is closed… And locked with a puzzle.
Puzzles are a frequently underutilised part of hack’n’slash, high-tempo, Sci-Fi games. It is simply assumed that they slow the tempo unnecessarily, and that they contribute to needless frustration in players. However, as the Drakkar Development team outlined in their creation of Blackwind, integrating puzzles into gameplay is a technique that can actually build tension, encourage creative problem solving and intuitively raise the stakes of gameplay.
Jimmy meeting Blackwind, the prototype AI Battle Frame, and “Best Buddy”.
Running Puzzles in an “Advanced Society” / Sci-Fi
In an incredibly advanced society with complex technology, it is expected that their tools would be bemusing to the regular person. The cognitive dissonance occurs between a player and their player character when what would be assumed as “common technology” for a highly automated, futuristic society, instead appears as a puzzle. More often than not, it simply doesn’t make sense. Why would a protagonist that lives in an advanced society struggle so much with utilising common technology? Luckily, in Blackwind, Jimmy is only a young boy -- with about the same experience in this advanced scientific domain as we have. It means that we meet these puzzles with the same lack of understanding, and an optimistic, maybe naive perseverance that there is “always a way”. For Jimmy, it is because he is only a child. For us, it is because we are determined to finish the game.
Jimmy & the Heroes’ Call
See, when we first meet Jimmy, he has not found his “Heroes’ Call” just yet. He is speaking with his father, reputable scientist and creator of the Battle Frame technology, about how the Artificial Intelligence (AI) found in the prototype Battle Frame known as “Blackwind” could be considered one’s “Best Buddy”. It is only moments later that Jimmy is trapped inside Blackwind and hurled from the Pandora Ship as it explodes. This sense of disorientated loss and confusion, grappling with a new “body” that refuses to let him go, finding himself in a new, barren landscape… Jimmy’s only sense of control comes from an adaptation to his environment.
At first, it appears impossible that a mere child would be able to survive on this desolate planet. But with the evolving assistance and camaraderie of the Blackwind suit, Jimmy learns and adapts to the new conditions, you learn to adapt as you control the Battle Frame. The Drakker Devs had done so intentionally, designing each level with an increasing complexity. At first, the blades allow Jimmy to destroy useful boxes and the space-jump function grants climbing and jumping to reach new heights. Climbing and leaping quickly become an integral part of navigating the battlefield, and the landscape of the game evolves to include the vertical dimension in play.
Blackwind expanding the dimensions of play.
“Environmental Puzzles Aren’t Just a Gameplay Feature…”
Drakkar Dev team stress that the puzzles are an integral part to plot progression. “Environmental puzzles”, they explain, “aren’t just a gameplay feature. Instead, they are a way to strengthen the storytelling of the game. They express Jimmy's sense of loss from being cast to a foreign planet and his need to find a way to find his father”.
In Blackwind, we find ourselves, at first, putting everything on the line to simply survive. The waves of alien invaders seem almost endless as we duck, weave, hack, slash, climb and destroy our way to safety… A nearby Base. With each successful level completion, each puzzle solved, there is a new sense of confidence in Jimmy. The question stops being “how will I survive?” and evolves into a statement: “I will defeat the hordes of aliens and find my father.”.
We face an ever-changing environment to make use of in play.
New Tools for Complex Puzzles: Weapons, Skills, Drones!
When inside the Base, the puzzles take a break from being the environment themselves and instead become new features, skills and attacks. The “Drone” detaches from the Blackwind Suit and flies under your control, allowing you to expertly manoeuvre around locked doors through ventilation systems. It even has lasers that can devastate your enemies!
Ultimately, puzzles can also add a dynamism that gives the player a nice break from the seemingly never-ending hack’n’slash that comes with protecting a planet against an alien invasion. They outline the truth -- that even this advanced society comes down to basic logic that the common person can unravel with enough time and patience.
Blackwind stands triumphantly as not only a hack’n’slash game, not only a twin-stick shooter, not only a platformer, but as an action and sci-fi game that is able to expertly integrate creativity with tension.
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