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Episode 2: The Hidden Map (latest revision: 2006/1/27)

length: long

difficulty: hard



One week later, here is the sequel to 'Obion', with about 5 times the number of puzzles and interactivity. As in the first one, one of the guiding principles was to have the puzzles be unique and challenging, but also to have them be solvable through 'brute-force' clicking around just in case they're too tough for any particular player.
(although for some of the puzzles that could take hours).

One of the other principles is that the narrative should never move backward (as in a failure to complete a particular puzzle having the result of forcing the player to a previous game-state). This only frustrates gameplay by forcing the player to do a lot of mindless and repetitive clicking to get back to where they were before.

Another has to do with perspective - the player can never turn around, and when it's necessary to back up, that's done with the down arrow that is in the same place on every screen. The motivation is to make navigation simple and never let it interfere with the gameplay.

A fourth has to do with the style of interaction. We decided to make this a 'click-only' game with no inventory and no dragging of items; the only exception are a couple of places where typing in of passwords is necessary. One of the essential aspects of casual games is that they need to be immediately accessable; that is, they cannot require any learning by the player before beginning - no instructions, no special key commands, etc. Those things are not bad in themselves, but games that require the user to learn how to play are not casual games.

The game style is also limited to non-time-based interaction, which is typical of the point-and-click adventure genre. It can be frustrating to users to suddenly come across an arcade-style puzzle in the middle of an otherwise action-free game.

Lastly, we wanted this game to be as language-neutral as possible. The Internet audience is multilingual, and creating content in only one language effectively shuts out potential users/viewers. This game has English-language preface and conclusion text, but neither is necessary to play and enjoy the game. Some of the puzzles do use English words, but in those cases, knowledge of the meanings of the words is not necessary. The semantics are irrelevant and the words are used only as sequences of symbols.

Note to everyone who completes this game (or who try and then give up). This is a new series, and future episodes will be designed based on comments on earlier episodes. So, please feel free to say what you liked or didn't like in the game - what you found too easy, or what you thought was too frustrating or complicated.