Personally I *love* secrets in games. Even better is secrets-in-secrets, or secret levels that contain even more secrets. When you design levels for a game, do you immediatly think about putting secrets in it or don''t you like them? Can gameplay be fucked up if there are TOO much secrets?

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Original post by Boops
Personally I *love* secrets in games. Even better is secrets-in-secrets, or secret levels that contain even more secrets.

When you design levels for a game, do you immediatly think about putting secrets in it or don't you like them? Can gameplay be fucked up if there are TOO much secrets?

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If there are big secrets that can only be accessed at a certain point in the game, then it can really piss players off. They may be way passed the secret, and feel cheated because they can't experience the whole game unless they undo all of their progress by starting over.



[edited by - thedevdan on May 15, 2004 11:18:05 AM]

I love secrets too. When I find them it usually ties me into the game more.

The only thing is in one of those Donkey-Kong games there were so many secrets, it kinda ''upset'' me (not really the right word but oh well) to think how many things I must be missing.

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Original post by Boops
When you design levels for a game, do you immediatly think about putting secrets in it or don''t you like them? Can gameplay be fucked up if there are TOO much secrets?

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Yes, gameplay can be fucked up by an overuse of secrets, especially if the secrets are essential to solving the game. You have to distinguish two classes of secrets:

- Essentials: Those are things hidden in the game world which are part of the story and should be challenging to find, but there must be clues on how to find them. Also, it must not at some point become impossible to get at them. Think about a key for a door on the last level that you have to get on the first level. If a player can get past L1 without the key, and doesn''t have a possibility to return there relatively hassle-free later on, don''t be surprised if a gang of pissed people knock on your door at 4a.m.

- Non-essentials: Little extras that make the game easier or are just plain cool. In an RPG, this would be a Really Big Sword^TM hidden somewhere out-of-sight, a piece of writing delving deeper into the backstory or a green fish. These should also be hinted at by some means ("legend tells of a powerful weapon hidden somewhere beneath an old courtyard", cracked walls, you get the point...), but are not needed to complete the game. If nothing else, those will give the game mags'' headhunters something to do.

If you have too many of the first kind, you''ll make some people nervous. It might be fun to find the key to the box to the door to the lever for the portcullis that bars the way through the portal behind which the level exit is hidden, but too many layers of nested "open the door" stuff are just boring. Vary those challenges, have passages where you have to think a lot but then have some with more action. Splinter Cell is an excellent example for (limited) variation. You have levels where you absolutely must not be spotted, must not kill anybody and which are very tricky and satisfying to play; but the following level will have you run around with full freedom, compensating for the built-up stress.

Too much of the non-essentials will make you look at all the stuff you''ve made, thinking that it''d be enough to keep the player awake for some nights, not seeing that the game can be finished in five minutes flat.

Shadowdancer is missing a third type of secret, the EasterEgg secrets. These include stuff like finding the faces of the developers, or getting an item that doesn''t do anything. These kind of secrets should be used on a As-Little-As-Possible basis, since they tend to clutter up a game and break the suspension of disbelief. Not that they aren''t fun, just these are more of a distraction than a diversion.

As for the Non-Essentials, I''d again be careful of putting too many in. For example, play any RPG where the secret boss has 1,000,000HPs and then question the need for the sword that it gives you after.

You can never go wrong with secrets. But too many secrets can make your game sound crap, just like having too many characters or too many stats can screw things up. For instance, look at Chrono Cross: 40+ characters, only 4-5 of which who gain any developpement. Or imagine a game where you have to manage 50-odd stats. Realistic? Probably. Fun? Not one bit.

I sort secrets into a few categories.

Hidden Secret
A hidden or otherwise concealed item, boss, cutscene, etc.. These rarely require much work on the player to unlock and are fully self-contained. No prior secret must be unlocked, although a little bit of work in the area the player is in may have to be done.

Final Fantasy II used this very frequently by making hidden passages and hiding stuff at the end. These passages were often quite short and led to a small room with a handfull of items that were usually pretty good. However, the japanese non-EasyType version of this was a living design flaw: there was absolutely no hint as to where a passage may be (as opposed to the US version, which had lighter coloring where most passages would go). The reward was usually too small to have the player banging into every walls at random for a few hours.

Final Fantasy III did this successfully by making a puzzle out of one of its secrets. In a tomb the party had to enter to unearth an airship, you''d find four tombstones with cryptic messages ("QSSI WEHT ERAU DLOR"). In an other room, there was a blank tombstone you could write these four words on. In a certain order, the words read "ERAU QSSI DLOR WETH" (THEW ORLD ISSQ UARE backwards). This unlocked a passage downstairs leading to the Exp. Egg, an item which doubles the experience a character gains. Nothing too complex but challenging enough to keep the player busy, and with a reward that really makes it worthwhile.



Sidequest
Not exactly a secret but it doesn''t fit with the rest of the game directly. A sidequest involves any optional event. Typically, the player is rewarded by these. This is basically a much longer "hidden secret."

Final Fantasy III gave too much importance to these and made the second half of the game nearly nothing but sidequests. While fun, this deterred a lot from the storyline. However, it was also a success in that it allowed the player to not only build the storyline on his/her own but also to explore the new ravaged world this occures in.



Obvious Secret
These are secrets that are dead-obvious or right in the player''s face.

Final Fantasy VII had three optional bosses called WEAPONs which could be fought by, well, bumping into them. These were dead-obvious: one of them was practically getting in the way most of the time!

Many RPGs have items hidden in unusual places, such as garbage cans in Earthbound. While these are right there, chances are the player won''t think of looking there for something.



Split paths
While not a secret, it IS a one-time event. Split paths are points in the story where two paths can be taken. This doesn''t exist in freeform RPGs for obvious reasons. A split path can occure when the player makes a decision, travels somewhere, or even finds an item sometime before the split occures.

My game, Endless Saga, has considerable amounts of split paths. In the first chapter of the game, there''s a war between two races. Depending on which race the player sides with, the story is dramatically influenced for the duration of the war (and remains influenced in many minor ways afterwards). Also, certain non-conscequential actions such as talking to specific townspeople can also trigger different discussions during cutscenes (for instance, a character may bring up the rumors of an artifact in some ruins if he spent enough time talking with the drunk hobo in the bar).



Complete Secret
This is the worse of all types of secrets and is sadly often found in many games. These are your average secret, but with ABSOLUTELY NOTHING hinting at them. The one redeeming quality of these is the sense of pride you get for finding them and the feeling that more stuff may be hidden. They may very well end up frustrating the player in the end.

There are countless examples. There''s a cutscene in Final Fantasy VII where the player can see more about the main character''s confused and jumbled past by going, at some point in the game, back to a mansion. Nothing hints at this at all.



Mixing and matching these with moderation can result in a great game, but having too many will just, to be blunt, suck.

I wouldn''t say there is anything as an essential secert. All secerts are optional, they are bonus items, characters, or story that player can enjoy.



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"Fate and Destiny only give you the opportunity the rest you have to do on your own."
Current Design project: Ambitions Slave

I liked the way Super Mario handled puzzles. They generally would put a block (or a key-hole) somewhere, and let you figure out how to get there. If you were really good at solving the puzzles, you could get to "Star Road," which was basicly level after level of puzzles. There were also less taxing puzzles, like finding all the "block switchs." Finding a secret either made each successive level easier, or allowed you to skip levels if you wanted to.

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Original post by TechnoGoth
I wouldn''t say there is anything as an essential secert. All secerts are optional, they are bonus items, characters, or story that player can enjoy.

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Mandatory secrets wouldn''t be secrets.

The sort of secrets I like are secrets that give a small extra neat thing to have, but not essential. Secrets essential to solve the game are not what I mean by secrets, because a secret has to be something you can miss and still finish the game. They''re something to make gameplay longer to those who like searching for them.

For example, items hidden in the bushes, a stack of crates that you can destroy and one of them appears to contain an item, or, very cool type of secret: an elevater where you can manage to get on top of the elevator cage and find something on top of the elevator shaft