Chris McEntee

McEntee began with collapsing platforms, long before there was a desert. One of his first tasks as a level designer on Ori was to find uses for a very basic prototype of the platforms. He answered with many paper sketches and early blockouts.

The burrow ability came first and the sand desert followed. The team asked what unique move would complement Ori's already robust moveset. A digging creature in a Sonic Colors video looked like a good Metroidvania traversal method.

"It wasn't because we had a desert environment that we said we want to be able to burrow in sand."

He sketched moments the burrow could solve and nothing else could. Spikes block a wall jump, so you dig through the wall and launch out. Diving into sand and dashing out clears spikes, because the dash jump is higher than a normal jump.

Blockouts of the sketches went to programmers and animators as the target for a first playable. Until then the burrow had only existed in the team's minds.

The burrow had to be tightened until it felt like the rest of Ori. The first version was slower and turned loosely on purpose, to feel like friction in sand. Team playtests tightened it, because Ori's controls are tight.

Fine-tuning took months and years, and that gap separated a cool prototype from the final feel.

Making the collapsing platforms out of sand solved the backtracking problem. In Rayman a trigger can collapse a whole section and you keep going. A Metroidvania needs a path to backtrack, re-explore and re-traverse, so a laser challenge with collapsing platforms was a one-way trip.

A programmer gave the sand a collapse-and-reappear property while it stayed diggable. It was unplanned, since the burrow did not exist when the platforms were made, and McEntee calls it a light bulb moment.

He fought to keep the giant laser room as a ramp to the final challenges. The room was in the very first demo sent to Microsoft. It was hard to get right and went through heavy iteration, but he pushed to keep it as a ramp up to one of the burrow's final challenges.

The appeal was digging through the environment while avoiding a giant laser, which felt memorable.

McEntee sketches many scenarios with one element before building any. He takes the elements at his disposal and creates as many unique scenarios as he can. One sketch has you ride a platform back when it returns to reach a higher spot, and another forces a drop, a catch and a double jump out.

Finding the interesting uses on paper is early and cheap.

He flips a familiar hazard to find a fresh use. Normally you avoid a collapsing platform. In a favourite blockout you break every platform on purpose, without touching the ground, to escort a projectile across the room.

He asked: "what would be an interesting way to flip the collapsing platform on its head?"

He designs expert moves with rewards that the easy route lacks. Dashing out of sand upward along your aim and back into another sand zone gives a feeling of control. Because it is hard, a reward can sit at the top.

Hanging sand balls launch you in a straight line from any direction, and they are one of his favourite uses for their versatility.

He layers difficulty on one element and spreads the escalations out. Aiming and burrowing through a sand ball is far harder than holding down on a sand floor, so the designer decides what comes first and where each layer goes.

He warns against putting all three or four escalations of one element in a single row, and mixes them with other elements for variety.

He hides secrets with quiet visual cues so players feel smart. A small lip on a wall guides the eye to a hidden spot, and breakable walls look different without a giant crack. He dislikes the off-screen hidden barrels in old Donkey Kong games, where you jump off the bottom of the screen and hope.

The aim is that everybody should be able to find many secrets.

All roads lead to the same destination. After the burrow is introduced, two routes lead back to the main path. Players can wander and discover without getting lost, and the aim is openness, not "now get to the main path".

The team refused to steer players with enemy strength. Act two opens four areas at once, and someone who picks the Luma Pools first should be able to finish them. The sequel was meant to be more open than the first game from the start.

"We didn't want to force people to take one path over another, in even a soft way."

McEntee accepts sequence breaking if the alternative is still a real challenge. A player can throw the light burst and skip the sand worms. That still takes a thrown light burst, a bash catch in the air and a dash through a sand ball.

"That's the price you pay for a little bit of freedom and options."

He softened the one forced dead end with fast travel and rewards. The desert is the last area needed for the story and is not locked, so players can reach it early and hit a dead end at the temple. Fast travel wells sit as close to the entrance as possible, and players still leave with experience, level-ups, shards and buffs.

Playtests raised the worry of an anticlimax, and the team accepted it as a trade-off.

He cut the drill because it only worked like a key and a door. The drill was planned for a dungeon with thick rock blockers and was cut because it was not versatile enough.

His rule is that every ability should change how you play.

A cut dungeon became a linear story beat that helped the pacing. The Windtorn Ruins turned into a linear story moment for production reasons. It breaks up intense burrow platforming before one of the hardest challenges in the game.

He wants escapes to cost a couple of deaths, never ten. About 60 to 80 percent of an escape should flow naturally and roughly 20 percent should be curveballs. Every threat must be react-able, and on the team an escape beaten first try is always called too easy.

Five or ten deaths feels like trial and error. A random trigger dropping something on you is not fun.

He dropped many burrow ideas because the best ones are easy to grasp. Cut ideas included a block you tunnel under to drop it, which the programmers disliked, and a big mama worm leaving an acid trail. A sand platform too thin to dig bounced the player out and became the trampoline platform.

There were enough ideas for a small sub-game, but the test is what players understand easily and what is novel without improving the game much.