Hand of the Water
A song of water and fire.
Infinite Level game discussed: The Future Project
After talking about The Future Project's snow world, Jeweled Tundra, a few months back, it's perhaps only fitting that we now take the time to talk about a world filled with lava and warm sands. Today I'm going to take you on a tour of the third major world in the game, called Hand of the Water. You've actually seen parts of this world before in previous screenshots and the game's trailer, but today I'm talking you on a proper tour of the world. Just keep in mind that some of the new screenshots I’m about to show may look different, through polish or otherwise, by the time the game releases. Now, you might be wondering “what's with the name”? Well, as the map screenshot will show below, this island is actually in the shape of a human hand. The inspiration for this design is admittedly a silly one. Somehow, I found myself twirling around a water bottle in my hand and eventually noticed how my hand would look when viewed through the plastic bottle of water. This small, insignificant interaction with my beverage made me then wonder “what if there's an island shaped like a human hand?” And that's how Hand of the Water was born. Ideas really can come from anywhere, can't they?
But as you'll soon see, there's a bit more to the world than just a cute inspiration. Let's start with the overall theme of the world. Like Distant Sibling, Hand of the Water is a lush world filled with green plants and lively enemies. You'll notice in each world that I try to keep to a color theme for each world. Distant Sibling, for instance, has a lot of green, brown, and yellow. Jeweled Tundra, meanwhile, has much more blue and white. Since there's already a lush world in the game, it was tricky to settle on overall colors for Hand of the Water, but I eventually decided on blue and red. You have the blue sky and ocean water taking up half of the visuals, and the bright red lava covering the other half. The idea is for the world to feel alive and well, perhaps even like a paradise. But as you explore and, most notably, get closer to the volcanic cave at its tip, the tone should change and the world should start to feel more dangerous. It's perhaps one of the only worlds to have such a transition in theme as it progresses, with the other worlds usually maintaining a consistent theme throughout.
Map of the island portion of Hand of the Water. Notice the vague hand shape? The letter/number combinations are there to help me identify rooms in code.
On the island, you'll quickly notice a few things. For starters, there's a large lava river coursing through the island and into the ocean, creating a constant obstacle that the player must overcome. I believe I've mentioned this before, but players can occasionally pick and choose which worlds they wish to tackle first, to some degree. So if you've opted to take on Jeweled Tundra first before coming here, you'll have the air dash ability which makes traversing past the lava river a lot easier. You can still get through the world without the air dash, but it requires you to look for elevated places and bridges to get across. As for the enemies, there's a literal rock spider and lava tentacle that you'll quickly notice, each with distinct behaviors. The rock spider will scuttle towards you quickly, whacking you when it gets close. As the Horned Rambeast from Distant Sibling will hopefully establish, rock enemies don't like missiles very much, so hitting the rock spider with a couple missiles will finish it off quickly. Otherwise, fights against are a lot longer. Lava tentacles are a little more straightforward, but of course it's sitting in a place that's hard to reach – the lava. They'll happily camp out here until one of you falls, so you'll have to defeat them from a distance to finish them off. Thankfully, they don't change position, but they are a little wiggly so be sure to aim carefully. Now, where are these lava tentacles coming from? Sorry, that's a secret. Feel free to send me your theories though.
The other two enemies you'll find here are a Neansaurus and a strange, fly-like creature that, when defeated, spawns several smaller enemies that chase after you. I've always found the gimmick of an enemy spawning a few smaller enemies on death a pretty entertaining done, and this enemy was the perfect excuse to implement that idea into my own game. Bugs are pretty weird, so it's only natural that my game's main bug-like enemy have something like this. Then you have the Neansaurus, which is essentially a faster, beefier, harder hitting Strider from Distant Sibling. I try to avoid having similar enemies between worlds, as the idea should be that worlds should be as unique as possible. But in this instance, it makes sense in the world's context. There probably would be a tall, lizard-like creature with “blade arms” to worry about, and it probably would behave like the Velociraptor-like enemies of another world. This is one of the only enemies that share stats and behavior from another enemy in a different world, so you'll still have plenty of unique enemies to look forward to in each world.
Get to the other side of the island, and you'll see where all this lava is coming from. There's a volcano at the edge of Hand of the Water, with origins deep beneath the ocean. It's evolved into a huge, volcanic cave with more unique enemies and completely different feel from the rest of the world. It's also the place where Hand of the Water's miniature quest takes place, is home to the Hand of the Water's boss fight, and is where you will ultimately find the fire element ability. Once inside, the lighting will change to a warm red, and though some enemies from before are found here as well, there's also a couple new ones that are exclusive to this area. The lava river is of course still present here, and perhaps more noticeable than before. Beyond a few select areas, the water you might associate this world with is now gone, replaced with nothing but molten lava and oppressive heat. It's a dangerous cave indeed, and in a game with a few cave systems, I'm hoping this one will manage to stand out to players. And now, a technical tidbit. As the player enters this cave, they are also entering what's known as a Post Processing Volume within the cave that helps give it its distinct red glow. Without it, the cave would look surprisingly blue and cool, which of course isn't the desired feeling for what's supposed to be a super hot, dangerous cave. While entering the cave, the game will blend the main island's post processing settings with the caves, to create a smooth transition to what you see now. You've likely played many games that do this exact thing, but of course you won't think about it while playing because you're obviously not going to see the bounding box that makes up these post processing volumes. I felt really clever when I figured out how to make this transition work, and thought I'd share a little behind the scenes detail about how it works.
As far as new enemies go, there's a variant of the Neansaurus called the Cave Neansaurus. It behaves very much like the original creature, but the difference is that it's fast but doesn't do as much damage, and also tends to be surrounded by other Cave Neansauruses (Neansauri? What would the plural of this be?). Because as you'll notice, the original Neansaurus tends to hang out by itself, with maybe one other nearby at most. Cave variants seem to understand the value of teamwork, and thus stick together to stay alive. Get the attention of more than a few and you might find yourself in an incredibly dangerous position. The other new enemy here is the Clinger, which stays in one location and doesn't do anything...or so it seems. Get too close, and it will shoot out poisonous spikes at you. Fortunately, you're a robot, so poison doesn't really affect you. Still, getting hit with sudden spikes does hurt. But since the enemy stands still, they're pretty easy to pick off. I designed this enemy to act as more of a trap than an actual enemy to fight, which means I try to place them in places that are not “intuitive”. So, when playing through this area, you'll need to keep an eye out for any Clingers hanging on walls or floors lest you get stabbed in the face by a slug.
Being a volcano, one might wonder...do I get to climb to the top? What about to the bottom where the lava is coming from? The answer to both of those things is “yes”. Hand of the Water is a fairly large world, most likely within the top half of biggest worlds in the game. When you first visit Hand of the Water, you'll only be able to reach the lower portion of the volcano. Later on in the game you'll need to make a second visit and explore the upper regions of the volcano. There will be considerably less lava here, and not as many enemies either. So there will be more of an emphasis on platforming in this moment. Both the bottom and top of the volcano will contain important items to help you progress through the game. As you might have guessed, the lower regions of the volcano will house the fire element ability. So what's at the top then? That's a surprise. You'll just have to play the game to find out. But rest assured, the climb will be worth it. I suspect players will have a lot of fun with the ability found there.
There's a lot that I like about this world. For starters, though I'm more the cold loving type myself, I do enjoy the lush environments and peaceful ocean atmosphere that I've created here. I also really enjoy the lava river, an ever present obstacle that no other world has. It gives Hand of the Water so much additional identity, and I'm really glad I came up with the idea. It will be fun to see how different players navigate around it, both with and without the air dash item. The world is largely complete, with only a boss fight and some remaining upper volcano rooms to be made before it's finished. I'm planning on starting that boss fight coding really soon. I recently finished another boss fight elsewhere in the game and have been making progress on another, so I've left this one alone for now to give myself time to work on other things. Once every single piece has come together, I believe players are going to find a very engaging world to explore, with plenty of interesting secret passages and environmental puzzles to solve. Progress has been moving along nicely, and I'm hoping to have a progress report blog ready for next month. That should give you something to look forward to!
Until next time!
-Lance T.