The Forgotten City

Let side quests come together in a final plan the player masterminds. The player tracks down Khabash, unseats Malleolus and, on a later loop, makes Galerius help nearly every citizen, so earlier side quests suddenly power one elaborate coup.

Time-loop films are about exploiting the loop, and this captures that feeling of empowerment. Mark Brown compares this final loop to Blue Prince's run to door 46 and Prey: Mooncrash's last run, where everything must be nailed at once.

A time loop turns failure into progress by keeping items and knowledge. About 20 residents of a small Roman city live under the Golden Rule, where one sin kills everyone. If the player fails to stop the sinner or breaks the rule, the clock rewinds, but new items and information carry over.

Stealing resin for Lucretia breaks the rule and forces a restart, yet the resin stays in the pocket and can go to the doctor. The assassin's bow can also be kept for a later quest. Galerius greets the player with the same line on every loop.

Keep the intro linear and short: where, what and why, then hand over control. Nick Pearce designed a "fairly linear" opening where Galerius sets the time and place and Sentius explains the Golden Rule and the mission before the player is freed.

Pearce wanted players to leave intrigued, motivated and feeling that talking to each person would be enjoyable. Every player learns the loop and the Golden Rule first hand.

Tie the player's own fate to the people they must help. Sentius explains that if the player stops the sin, the portal is never made and they never come to the city, so helping the townspeople is the only way to help themselves.

Pearce: "they understand that helping these people is the only way to help themselves."

Pair open freedom with an optional lead so players don't freeze. Early builds dropped players into total freedom after the intro, which Pearce found "overwhelming and immobilising". Sentius now suggests visiting Lucretia at the shrine of Apollo, a route that passes key clues and quests and hands out the two quests that lead to all the endings.

Mark Brown bounced off Outer Wilds at first because of its flood of planets, people and dead ends, the freeze this lead was built to avoid.

Give the guided path obvious off-ramps at every step. Players can drop Sentius's lead, pursue Equitia's "Common Thread" goal instead, or tell Galerius to jog on in the first seconds.

Players who want to think for themselves are fully supported, while those who feel lost get a rollercoaster tour of key information and quests.

Offer several ways to find each lead and several ways to finish it. About 20 leads often start from two or more characters, and objectives have multiple solutions, such as entering Malleolus's villa via the pool, the vines or bribing the guard.

This makes it much harder to miss a vital clue or hit a dead end in a non-linear game.

Link almost every quest so progress in one advances another. Pearce plotted every quest and found almost all link to at least one other. Saving Fabia in the Intruder lead helps four others: Democracy in Action, The Sinner, A Virtuous Man and Straight as an Arrow.

The links run through the traitor clue, saving Fabia and the assassin's bow, so the player never finishes a self-contained quest and wonders what to do next.

Characters who gossip about neighbours make a small world feel deep. Pearce had each of the roughly twenty citizens mention their neighbours as often as natural, unlike open worlds where NPCs stand side by side as disconnected individuals.

The result is a game described as narrow as a puddle but deep as an ocean.

Use a few justified gates so key reveals land in the right order. The player can't name the culprit before identifying several suspects, Equitia won't reveal the city's nature until several backstories are collected, and the Philosopher blocks the tunnels until the player knows it.

Pearce found some beats discovered out of order confused or disappointed even smart players, but used gates sparingly because "gates run at cross-purposes to the game's open-world design philosophy."

Space revelations out so the story reads like a page-turner. Gating means the game never shows all its cards at once, delivering a steady stream of surprises: the city's true nature, its history and the culprit behind the Golden Rule.

Make the ending's reward proportionate to the effort invested. A selfish player can finish quickly but unsatisfyingly. The best ending needs four plaques to open the main temple, which means solving nearly every mystery in the city.

Pearce: "the player should get the ending they deserve."

Let side quests come together in a final plan the player masterminds. The player tracks down Khabash, unseats Malleolus and, on a later loop, makes Galerius help nearly every citizen, so earlier side quests suddenly power one elaborate coup.

Time-loop films are about exploiting the loop, and this captures that feeling of empowerment. Mark Brown compares this final loop to Blue Prince's run to door 46 and Prey: Mooncrash's last run, where everything must be nailed at once.

Don't keep a system that clashes with the core design. The game remakes a hugely popular 2015 Skyrim mod in Unreal Engine, and the wonky Bethesda combat it kept is its one notable flaw.

The rest of the design is built around talking, exploring and investigating, which clunky combat jars against. It is on Steam, the major consoles and Game Pass.