Making Ori and The Will of the Wisps' Best Level

Welcome to On the Level - a new video series in which I play excellent video game levels, alongside the designers who made them. In this episode I'm talking to Chris McEntee, who was a level designer on the Rayman games, before becoming lead designer on Ori and the Will of the Wisps over at Moon Studios. For this video we picked an area from Ori called the Windswept Wastes: which features a perilous climb up a mountain in the desert - with crumbling platforms, the ability to dig through sand, giant laser beams, and a final escape from a monster worm.

Chris was kind enough to share concept art, sketches, prototypes, and other behind-the-scenes goodies - and really go in-depth into how a new ability is designed, and how a level is built around it. So, without further ado, please sit back and enjoy this interview. MARK INTERVIEWING: So where exactly did you start when you were making this area? CHRIS: It was very much mechanics focused at first. When I first joined the team one of my first tasks as a level designer was to come up with some interesting level design situations using these platforms that collapse when you stand on them, which actually are featured in the the Windswept Wastes. But back then it was just a very simple gameplay element, a very basic prototype.

And it's like 'how can we use this in interesting ways?'. And so I did a bunch of sketches for how we could use these platforms. For example, I like this one where it's sort of multi-use, right? So first you have to jump on the platform, don't touch the ground, then jump over again, and then when it comes back on the other side you use it to then get up to somewhere higher. Or something like this where you have to force yourself to drop down, catch yourself after dropping, and then use a double jump to get out. And just playing with all kinds of different, like just on paper really. Like what would be interesting ways to use this gameplay element?

MARK: I think my favourite take on it is up here where you have to intentionally break the platforms to guide this projectile across the room. CHRIS: That's also again one of those very… it's one of the earliest blockouts that I did for this. Because that's the kind of designer I am: I like to basically workshop. I take the elements that I have at my disposal and then I just create as many unique scenarios that I can. I think you actually made a video about it, about workshopping in Mario Maker. The way that you sort of create interesting situations, you take the elements and you try to make interesting combinations of different things and create unique situations that exploit all of their unique traits and properties and all that kind of stuff. And so I was like what would be an interesting way to flip the collapsing platform on its head? And, well, what about if you have to intentionally make

all of them disappear without touching the ground, so that way you can escort a projectile across. MARK: So now in this room we get the area's main new ability: the burrow. Tell me how that came about. CHRIS: A lot of what's in the Windswept Wastes came as a result of wanting this burrow ability. It wasn't because we had a desert environment that we said we want to be able to burrow in sand, it was because we said 'what are some cool, unique moves that would complement Ori's already really robust moveset?' and burrow was something that… I think we saw a video from Sonic Colors where there was a cool ability. Some kind of weird little guy you collect that makes you dig in these big volumes and it was like 'hey, that could be a really interesting traversal method for a Metroidvania'. And so I just started with doing a couple sketches like this. So there's sand and you have to have to get up here. You can't wall jump because there's spikes there. How do you get

up? Well, you have to dig through this wall and then you have to launch yourself out. And then I started, as I was looking at the situation, I added this kind of sand thing above here and I was like 'well, wouldn't it be cool if I could dash out upwards, based on my aiming trajectory, and then dash backwards into another sand zone'. And I have this feeling of control and it opens up for a more expert move and you can put a reward up here because it's not an easy thing to do.

Or I even sketched out things like this, you see in the Windswept Wastes there are these little hanging balls of sand and you can basically dash through them from any side, any direction, and then it launches you straight through in a straight line. And so I sketched something like this as the initial concept for that. It worked out quite well in the game, it's one of my favourite uses of the burrow because it's so versatile and it gives such a feeling of control. And then so I just sketched out an idea like this where it's like 'this would not be possible without this ability'. In this one it was sort of illustrating Ori's normal jump height here, he would jump straight into these spikes. But then what if I jump and dive into the sand and then dash out and now I can suddenly clear it because the dash jump is higher than normal. Then what I would do is I would actually just recreate these

situations in the blockouts and then that's when we would take it to the programmers and say 'okay look, we have these environments, we want to be able to play them the way that they're illustrated in these schematics and everything else'. We got some animations from the the animation team. And then we were basically at the first playable prototype of it. And that became very exciting because it was like up until that point it had just been something on a concept. It was just something that existed in our minds of like this is how I imagine this playing and then you actually get your hands on it and it feels, you know, pretty cool. But then obviously there's months and years of fine-tuning and tweaking the controls and everything else to make it feel just as cool as it does in the final game. You can see that it feels actually slower than the final game and what you're probably going to see as well is that the turning isn't as tight

as it is in the final game. And the original intention was I wanted it to feel a bit tricky to control, that it felt like there was some, you know, friction in the sand and you're not as nimble as you always are and everything else. But the more we play tested it with the team the more we tightened it up because, ultimately, Ori controls are tight. Like, all round. And in the end I'm happy that we got there, right, it's just one of those things that when you're in the process you don't immediately see these things. At this point you can even see that I was using the collapsing platforms but I wasn't actually… they're not made of sand.

MARK: When did you realise that they should be made of sand? CHRIS: That came quite… that came later because I created a scenario. I created a little level. You have these collapsing platforms above lasers and the idea would be that you have to gauge yourself as you land on them and you have to glide and you have to wait for the right opportunity to then drop through the laser. So it's a little bit of a fairly straightforward collapsing platform challenge, let's say. But then by the time I got to the bottom I was like 'oh that was cool, but that's a one-way thing' and for a Metroidvania, of all things, that's not acceptable. In a game like Rayman you could have a level design sequence that, basically, you touch a trigger, this whole thing collapses and explodes, and if you manage to survive: cool. You can keep going with the level.

But you can't go backwards. But in a Metroidvania, if all of a sudden your path backwards is broken... now you're screwed. You need to always be able to backtrack, re-explore, re-traverse. And so then what I did was, I asked one of the programmers to basically take the sand and give them the sort of collapsing property so they could disappear and reappear. But then you could also dig through them. And so then that resulted in me basically being able to create the situation where now you can backtrack just by digging through these platforms. And all of a sudden it started to make sense: you know it was like 'wait a second', these things, you can do much more with them in the environment and level design and it really starts to open up the possibilities and the flow opportunities, and things like that, in a way that we didn't have before. I want to say, a little bit like, I'm a bit ashamed of how long it took to put two and two together that

those things worked. But I'm not really because it was never the intention from the beginning, you know? We didn't make these collapsing platforms with this burrow in mind because that didn't exist at the time. But then as I was prototyping and playing it was just one of those things that naturally came out of the exploration and it just felt like a light bulb moment. MARK: So now we have the burrow, the player isn't explicitly told where to go next. So how do you trust that the player won't get lost?

CHRIS: That was actually a tricky one. If you pay attention to the environment there's actually two ways to get back to the main path and a lot of players tend to go down this path that you just went through. But then there's actually another path that leads you to the golden path as well. We want the players to feel like they have options and that they are free to sort of explore and discover and see what's exciting and fun to to do with the burrow now that they have it. We kind of wanted that feeling of openness and discovery as opposed to it just being 'now get to the main path and get on with it' pretty much. But the bottom line is that all roads kind of lead to the same destination so that no matter what, you're going to eventually land on where you have to be.

MARK: As the level is going along, the difficulty is slowly increasing. How do you maintain a good difficulty curve throughout the area? CHRIS: So as a designer you kind of have to gauge the difficulty of adding extra layers on top of certain mechanics. Like the burrow, for example. So having to aim and burrow through a ball like this is something that's far more complicated to understand and do and perform than it is to just simply stand on a sand floor, hold down, and then press the burrow button. And so it's about understanding the layers of complexity that are added on top each time you change up the the recipe or you change up the elements in a given situation, and then sort of gauging that, you know. Where should that best be placed, you know, what comes first. And there's also one thing you really don't want to do, is take the the learning for one specific element in isolation and kind of get it all over with in one row. Like you don't want to just say 'okay,

here's all three or four difficulty escalations of one specific gameplay element and then completely move on to another one'. You kind of want to, you know, intersperse them and mix them around and everything else so that way it feels like there's variety throughout the experience. MARK: The whole area is absolutely packed with secrets to find. What's your process for hiding these things? CHRIS: We don't go for the crazy obscure secrets, I think there's… for example, this secret is a perfect example of how we tend to do it. Where what you'll see is that there's a little lip when you're out of the secret wall that guides your eye and tells you there might be something behind here. And it's the same for sort of broken, breakable walls. We kind of have these visuals that indicate that this wall is different from others without making it super obvious. Like here's a giant crack in it, you know,

like a bombable wall in a Zelda. game. I'm personally not a fan of the hidden barrels in the old Donkey Kong games that are just like off the edge of the screen that you just can't even see… MARK: Where you just have to, like, kill yourself. CHRIS: Exactly. It's just basically you have to keep jumping off the bottom of the screen in random places and hope that you manage to to land in a barrel. The end of the day we want people to find secrets because we want them to feel smart. We want them to feel like they've accomplished something and so everybody should have the ability to find many of them.

MARK: I really love this room with the giant laser beam. Tell me about how you made this. CHRIS: This was one of the oldest ones. It was there in that very first demo that we sent to Microsoft. It was one of the early things that I prototyped because it felt like, well, this is a crazy thing like having to kind of dig through this environment while avoiding a giant laser and stuff. It's also one of those ones that went through quite a bit of iteration and back and forth from the team because it wasn't super easy, especially the first version that we did. But I pushed pretty hard to keep it around because I kind of believed in it as this kind of ramp up for the one of the final challenges of the burrow. And it felt very memorable.

MARK: So as we come towards the end of the stage, I wanted to ask about progression. In act two of Will of the Wisps you can visit four areas at the same time, including this one. What sort of considerations did you have to make to let the player choose their own path? CHRIS: Yeah, there were a lot of considerations and it wasn't easy. From the get-go of the sequel the team decided this one is going to have a more open structure than the first one but then the question arose, well, how do you maintain the balance of the game?

MARK: Yeah, the big one I assume is that the player may or may not have certain abilities when they get here. I guess that could lead to them sequence breaking bits of the game? CHRIS: The thing that you literally did with the sand worm there is a perfect example of just that where, yes if you do have the light burst - which you do - you can actually just throw the light burst and you don't have to deal with the the sand worms. But to be totally fair I think you're just in this mindset of, like, I'm doing burrowing, I'm digging around and everything else, so you just naturally explore and find the solution to it. But we're also firm believers in the ability of the player to take the tools that they're given throughout the game and solve the issue the way that they feel is the most interesting or natural way to do it. As long as that doesn't feel like boring or that it kind of undermines the entire situation. But honestly, throwing a grenade,

catching it in the air with bash, and then dashing through a sandball… it's not exactly the most trivial thing in the world either. It's still a decent challenge, it's just not exactly the way that it was designed. But that's the price you pay for a little bit of freedom and options. MARK: And what about the difficulty of the enemies and challenges, which is gonna feel different depending on where the player goes first?

CHRIS: In some games it's nice that you go to an area you see strong enemies or difficult challenges and you go, 'I'm probably not ready for this yet, I should come back later'. But we didn't want to force people to take one path over another, in even a soft way. We really wanted it to be, if you choose to go to the Luma Pools first you should be able to complete Luma Pools at that point of the game. And interestingly enough the Windswept Wastes, it was kind of an outlier from the rest of those areas because it is the last area you have to do to be able to progress the story forward. But we decided to not block it off and say 'no no, you can't even enter the Windswept Wastes until you've done all these things'. We wanted to still give you a chance to discover this cool desert environment and get this new cool ability quite early, but there had to be something at a certain point in the progression that told you

you can't go forward anymore. You need to go off and explore the other areas. MARK: Were you worried that it might be a bit anticlimactic if you got all the way to the end of this area only to find a dead end? CHRIS: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And, I mean, it did come up when we were playtesting and we tried our best to really make sure that it didn't feel as anticlimactic as possible. We put fast travel spirit wells as close to the entrance of that temple as possible so that you can always fast travel right back without having to redo the entire area all over again. And so right now you might feel a little bit like 'ah, what did I come here for?'. But at least you leave with a cool new ability, having gained some experience, levelled things up, found some shards and buffs, and things like that.

And also you have a fast travel zone where you can easily come back later. So in the end it was again one of those trade-offs that we decided to make but it definitely didn't break the experience from what we observed and how we felt. MARK: So the final part here is very different to the ends of the other areas in the game, right? CHRIS: Exactly. The Windtorn Ruins originally was a dungeon. We were gonna explore new mechanics, get a new ability: which was the drill, which actually would let you kind of burrow through really thick rock blockers. Which ultimately got cut because it wasn't admittedly the most amazing, versatile skill. We wanted every ability to feel like it really changed the way that you play, not just gave you a key to open a door or something like that. But, yeah, so it was originally meant to be a dungeon but then when it came down to production concerns we made the decision that it just wasn't necessary and we decided that we would turn it into this linear

storytelling moment. And it actually turned out to be perfect for pacing because you've already done all these intense platforming challenges with the burrow leading up to this and you're about to go into one of the hardest challenges in the entire game, and it's just been really important for the pacing of the overall experience to sort of break it up every now and then. MARK: Let's talk about these escape sequences. How do you design them so they're hard enough to be a challenge, but not so hard as to be tedious?

CHRIS: It's funny because if somebody doesn't escape on their first try in the team, it's always 'it's too easy, I did it on my first try'. So everyone kind of acknowledges the fact that an escape needs to be something where you at least die once or twice. But nobody wants to die five times or ten times in an escape because then it starts to get really frustrating and it feels like trial and error. So there has to be a lot in an escape that feels intuitive and natural that you see it on screen and you know immediately how to to overcome the challenge. Let's say like 60, 80 percent of the escape has to kind of flow naturally while being challenging but then there can be like 20 percent where there's a couple curveballs thrown in there that catch you off guard or surprise you. It still has to be react-able, it shouldn't be that you touch a random trigger and a thing falls on your head and you die because that's just not fun.

It has to feel like I had the time to predict this thing I had the time to read the situation I just sort of failed to do so and I can do better next time. MARK: So, last question. Were there any sequences or mechanics that didn't make it into the final game, other than the drill? CHRIS: Well when we're building these things we have kind of like a surplus of ideas of things like… what about these like this big physical block? And you actually have to burrow left and right underneath it to kind of tunnel out the ground so it can fall down, and everything else, and open a path. Obviously you can imagine the programmers weren't too thrilled about that kind of idea, so it didn't make it in. We had an idea for like sort of a big mama worm that that would kind of leave an acid trail or something. One day I thought, well what if I have a platform like a sand platform that's so thin that you can't actually dig and so what would happen

is you would burrow into it and immediately be bounced out. And it ended up becoming a kind of trampoline platform. It's like in some of these environments, it feels like we had enough ideas to almost do its own little sub game around a certain mechanic or concept or whatever. But then it's just the process is finding what works best what's the easiest for players to appreciate and understand and what's like a novel idea but not necessarily gonna make the game so much better.

MARK: That's brilliant. Thanks very much for doing this Chris. CHRIS: Well thanks for having me, I appreciate it. It's just nice to look back at all these materials and remember like all of these cool moments and the process and how we got there and everything. MARK NARRATION: And so there we have it. I thought it was amazing how we saw the burrow mechanic go from inspiration, to sketches, to prototype, to the final in-game ability. My thanks to Chris for his time and transparency.

This was, of course, just a pinch of the full interview - so if you want to see the entire thing (and support the show) the full version is now available to everyone who supports GMTK over on Patreon. Speaking of supporting the show - if you like what you just saw and want to show your appreciation, please check out this quick YouTube ad break. Stick around afterwards for an indie game recommendation. Okay, my recommendation this time is a game called Dorfromantik. It's a cross between a city builder, a tile-based board game, and a puzzler. You've got to plop down tiles featuring forests, lakes, towns and more - and you'll need to think carefully in order to solve mini quests and objectives. It's very clever, it's super relaxing, and it strips down city builders to their DNA. Dorfromantik is in early access now, over on Steam.