The Setting of Dead Gear, Part 1

When I was thinking about a possible location for a Metroidvania-type game, I had to give it some thought.

Very often, platformer/metroidvania games in general have a few archetypal settings. A lava area, a snowy area, a forest area, a desert area, and so on. Using archetypes like these in a game should never really be considered bad by themselves; after all, they are archetypes for a reason. Players expect and know what the dangers and gimmicks will be in a lava area. (Rising lava, fireballs, deadly heat, fire enemies that are weak to ice, etc) Using the archetypal areas ensure that your game will have a variety of areas that take advantage of familiar gimmicks that do not need to be explained. The Mario games in particular play well with these archetypes, drawing and playing off of player expectations in their designs.

Players enjoy a degree of familiarity, as long as it is not so familiar that it feels canned. The Castlevania games are a good example. In each game of the series, the player traverses through Dracula's castle. In each of the games, there is a significantly different rendition of the same familiar locations (such as Dracula's throne room, and the Clocktower area), but the developers are consistently adding completely new areas in each game as well. A mix of old and new, a blend of familiar and unexpected is ideal.

The Dead City area, in Dead Gear

Icy Forest area, in Dead Gear

I wanted to be sure that in each of the 'zones' that I designed, that they would all have a distinct feel, way of playing, and color scheme to them. As I designed mobs (enemies) for each of the zones, I made a conscious decision to not reuse mobs outside of their native area, to insure that each area feels unique. I decided to make snow a common element for all of the outside areas to remind the player that these are actual linked locations, and you're not going to find a random desert out in the middle of a mountain range. More on this later.

-Kirb