Nelumbo

The vertical slice we did was the first zone of the game, which also worked as a tutorial. It is the natal planet of the main character, but the player is not aware of that information, so that level must also tell that. The setting is a forest village with tribal motives, where the people are suffering from a strange disease, so they are not able to remember some things, and the character has to help them remember.

Knowing that, the level must serve a number of objectives: It must be a tutorial of the main mechanics, it must be perceived as a mystical but at the same time plausible village, and must be an easy introduction of how the rhythm and the pathing of the game will be.

As you can see, the level is thought as a two-floor forest, where the village is at the top of several giant trees, built between branches and leaves, and connected with wooden bridges. The first floor works as a tutorial of the movement mechanics (movement, jump, etc.) in a progressive way, and also as an introduction of how the map will work: there are gates that can't be opened yet, there are keys that open gates, it seems linear but the player can find secret paths...

The second floor works as a narrative introduction, and shows the player how to interact with NPCs, and how the game's main mechanic (returnong memories to NPCs) works. It also unlocks the telescope and the spaceship, which enable the player to travel to the next levels of the game.

Finally, I'm going to show you some images of relevant aspects of this map, some concepts of a puzzle section of another map, and a proposal of how the second map (much more focused on the platformer aspect) would be.