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Games Designer
SKYLARK
Skylark: Text
Skylark: Video
Gameplay/Mechanics:
The primary mechanic of Skylark is managing the power levels of various machines to progress through the narrative. Your gun is able to carry up to three charges. With the left mouse button you can add charge, and with the right mouse button you can subtract charge.
We wanted to keep the UI at minimum and convey all critical information using just in game visuals and sounds. All the interactable puzzle objects have a charge panel on it which can take between 1-3 charges. As you can see below, the current amount of charge a panel needs to perform its function is denoted by the amount and colour of the tubes:
Skylark: Text
Skylark: Video
Your gun also follows the same visual cues, with the colour of the three barrel rings denoting how much charge your gun holds. Additionally, when charging a shot to deliver more than one charge to a panel, the colours of both the charged shot and gun tubes change to indicate how much charge you will shoot and how much will remain in your gun respectively. Since the management of the charges is a zero sum game, if a player attempts to shoot out charge but misses a panel, the charge will simply return to the gun.
Skylark: Text
Skylark: Video
As well as visual cues, the sound of the gun also gives the player important feedback, with distinct sounds for successful shots, failed shots and the differing charge levels.
Skylark: Text
Skylark: Video
Level Design:
Elevator Room (0:45 - 1:08 of above playthrough)
Skylark: Text
Skylark: Image
As the first puzzle of the game, this had to be very simple - everything needed for the solution had to be instantly visible the moment you entered the room, no shooting from a different vantage points like the section after. But it also had to teach the player the concept of taking power from panels as well as just adding to it, and stop the player from progressing until they have understood it.
Thus rather than adding power to the lift, the lift starts charged and in its raised position. The player must withdraw its power, which causes the lift to lower, and then repower it once he has climbed on top.
Thirdly in order to ensure they leave the room with no charges, they must withdraw the lift’s power once again in order to open the door. Thus they enter the room with 0 charges, and leave with 0 charges.
Escape Pod Room (4:20 - 5:08)
Skylark: Text
Skylark: Image
This room was an experiment to tie the puzzle gameplay closer to the narrative, giving the player’s actions a greater sense of consequence via a puzzle with two different outcomes: an obvious but sub-optimal solution – where you only save half the crew – and the “correct” solution, for those who take the time to think ahead before they fire – which saves all the crew.
On entering the chamber, the captain informs the player that some crew remain trapped in unpowered life pods above you (icons 3 & 4), and that if you do not charge the pods in time before leaving the crew will asphyxiate. The charging station (icon 2) provides 3 charges. Both escape pod panels require one charge, which then become inaccessible to the player, since the outer doors shut when the pod jettisons.
This is explained to the player through the captain's dialogue on entering the room, and the player is warned that they only have one shot to get it right – which ensures the player is made aware of a possible misstep and does not feel unfairly cheated should they rush through with Solution 1.
Solution 1 (sub optimal)
The most obvious course is as follows. The player takes the 3 charges from the charging station (icon 2). They place one in the lift (icon 1a) which raises the it up one floor. They then place their second charge into the escape pod (icon 3). They now only have one charge left to power both raise the lift another floor (icon 1b) and power the second pod (icon 4). As a result the timer will run out, the player will begin to hear their comrades die over the tannoy system, which will then be cut off by the captain who consoles the player and advises them to keep moving.
Solution 2 (optimal - shown in playthrough)
However, if the player plans ahead, they can go straight to the top of the room (one charge into 1a, another into 1b) and release the second pod (icon 4) first. They will then be able to move back down a floor by extracting a charge from 1c, fire it into the pod (icon 3), and then move back down to the ground floor by extracting the final charge from 1b, which they can then use to leave the room (icon 5) – saving both sets of crewmen, and receiving congratulations from the captain before moving on.
NOTE: you may notice that there is currently an exploit to this puzzle. In its current implementation it is possible to get to the top via method 1, and then take the charge from the lift (icon 1c) to power the second pod (icon 4), and then simply jump down onto the lift which has now moved to the floor below. I had intended to prevent this by redesigning the lift such that the controls were only accessible while standing on it, but unfortunately with the 3D assets available to me and other more pressing issues, I was unable to do so before the project deadline.
Reactor Room (7:04 - 8:31)
Skylark: Text
Skylark: Image
This room is a timed resource management puzzle. The player must balance both sides of the room so that all 10 reactors hold 2 charges, within just over 4 minutes, or else the reactor will explode, killing and restarting the player – while having three charges left in their gun with which to open the exit door.
In order to cross from one side of the room to the other they must cross through two dividing doors (B & C) using a control panel (D). While D remains empty B will stay open. When charge is added to D, B will shut, and when D holds all 3 charges then C will open.
The room will therefore be impossible to balance out until the player realises that the only way to swap charge from one side of the room to the other is by using reactors 5 & 6 – ie. by adding charge to them on one side, and extracting it from the other.
Skylark: Text
Corridor Design
As stated above, because the charge system is a zero-sum game, if a player ever manages to break it by entering the next area with a charge greater than 0, the carefully constructed balance of every subsequent puzzle would be thrown out and the challenge is trivialised. Yet we wished to keep the game’s puzzle elements as narratively plausible as possible, and did not wish to force the player to give up charge in an obtrusive gamified way – such as Portal’s material emancipation grills, for instance, which would make no sense in our story’s context.
Thus where possible we designed the spaces so that an exit door’s panel could simply not be seen (and therefore targeted) from the other side the door, preventing players from stealing a charge from the previous room no longer in use.
Skylark: Text
Skylark: Image
Where this was not visually or practically possible with the 3D asset components available to us, I developed a system of double doors with special scripting, such as those in the image above.
The panel connects to both doors, and the player's position is kept track of with hitboxes. To ensure the player does not get caught between the doors if the player tries to steal a charge from the previous room while still between them, only the outer door will close until thye have returned to the previous room at which point the inner door will also close.
The doors visually close at an appealing speed, but invisible colliders force the player back instantly if the player attempts to steal a charge will standing on the threshold and sprint to the other side.
When the player is beyond both doors, the hitbox on the panel is disabled to prevent the player form stealing a charge, if they manage to find an angle where they can line up a shot.
And finally, as a last resort, if it is detected that a player has somehow managed to defeat my systems and progressed into a new room with a positive charge, I inelegantly delete the charge, just in case.
Skylark: Text
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