Stav Goldstein

Hi everyone,

On this post I’m gonna talk about the early stages of The Splitting’s design. It’s gonna contain some spoilers for the 1st chapter, but not for later ones.

Design

So, I knew I wanted to do something with mirrors, something “puzzely”. I had an image in my head of a screen split in half, showing two rooms – a regular room and its reflection – and the hero passing from one to the other through the mirror and moving objects around. This early design was very “puzzely”, and kinda reminded me of the game Sokoban with its top view and keyboard based mechanics. Later, as the game became less puzzle and more adventure, I decided it would be better if the screen showed only one room, but I kept the view and the controls the way they are. Now it reminded me more of To The Moon.

Sokoban and To The Moon

Now I had to define the relationship between the two worlds – how they will react to each other – which would also determine the game’s mechanics. The heart of the game, basically. At first I thought they could affect each other equally – when you move an object in one world, that movement will be copied in the other one. Then I thought it could be more interesting if the relationship wasn’t symmetrical. Maybe the real world could control the mirror world, but not the other way around. As the game progressed and the world and story became more dominant, It also became more important to me that the world will make sense as a whole, as a system with rules, so I decided the mechanics should come from there.

So I went back to the beginning and started with a simple situation – Let’s say, a person with a reflection lifts an apple in the real world, and meanwhile, in the mirror world, his reflection lifts the apple’s reflection as well. The reflection, being in some sort of hypnotic trance, copies the real person’s actions in perfect synchronisation. But, what happens in the mirror world when a person without a reflection lifts an apple? I wanted the world to feel natural and logical, so I went with the answer which felt most natural to me, which is that nothing would happen on the other side. The apple will stay where it is. In the first example the reflection was responsible for lifting the apple. In the second example there is no one to lift it.

The hero, being without a reflection, will have to use people with reflections throughout the game, if he wants some actions to have a symmetrical effect on both worlds. He will also have to use them without them knowing, because people with reflections don’t know about splittings and the mirror world. This creates an a-symmetrical relationship between the two worlds. You can only talk to people in the real world, because the reflections, being in their trance, can’t hear or see you. So you can affect the mirror world through the real world, but not the other way around.

Story

The story began with a few random thoughts. What I already knew was that the hero’s reflection is gonna be missing from the beginning. There was no point delaying it. The reflection has to disappear so that the hero could pass through the mirror into the other world. Also, I wanted the game to start out with this mystery. The hero will have to find out the reason why the splitting happened, which would require him to both investigate the mirror world, learn about splittings in general, and to learn about the events in his life which led to his specific splitting.

Another thing I already knew was that I wanted the mirror-less rooms to be chaotic, like that closet no one ever opens so no one bothers cleaning it up. And then I thought – this could be a good place for someone to live in, especially if they don’t want to be found – And that’s how llehctiM was born. I thought it would be cool if there was someone hiding in the mirror house, who could also function as a guide for the hero as he learns the basic rules of this world. The idea of him being the twin of the criminal Mitchell came kind of naturally, since I needed a reason as for why he needed a place to hide in the first place, and I wanted to bring some version of the prisoner from my short story to the game.

Early sketch of Daniel and llehctiM’s first meeting

Problems

Now I’m gonna get a bit more technical and talk about some problems I encountered at the very early stages of the game’s design.

Quite early in the design process I discovered a problem – When the hero passes through a side mirror, he will enter a room which is flipped horizontally. But what about a front mirror? Will the mirror world be flipped vertically in this case? It would create 2 views for each world, as shown in the picture, an addition which require a lot of work, and worse – it could confuse the player.

A sketch describing the problem with side and front mirrors

I was trying to decide weather to allow front mirrors or not. If I did allow them, I should consider letting the player rotate the world, in order to navigate between the different views. but then I reminded myself that I wanted to keep the game simple, so I chose to avoid front mirrors and only flip the world horizontally. It’s kinda funny, because a few months later, deeper into the development, I wanted to add a mirror, cause traveling to the bedroom every time in order to pass through the mirror just wasn’t working, so I added one in the living room. A front mirror. But when you go through it, the world flips horizontally, not vertically. I can’t say it bothers me that much, And I don’t think anyone else cares either.

Another choice I had to make was the side walls. Usually, top view games don’t have side walls. Take Pokemon or To The Moon for example. They don’t have them and they don’t really need them. But I wanted to have side walls. I wanted the mirrors there, so when the hero will pass through one, the player could see both his face and the mirror.

Pokemon and To The Moon. No side walls.

I considered a few options, the main being a Clue-like graphic style, which gives the room perspective and shows a bit of the side walls. But I didn’t think that would look good with the pixel-art style, which doesn’t do to well with diagonals shapes. Plus, this view would show only the top of the hero’s head, and I wanted the player to see his hero’s face.

Clue – billiard room

I was already thinking about cancelling side walls and side mirrors all together, but then I remembered that an early sketch I made of the apartment had mirrors on the walls. I went back to that sketch and I decided to try and make this work. It does twists the perspective a little, and some people have a problem with it. But still, most people don’t see anything wrong with it, so I believe this is the best choice.

Apartment sketch with side mirrors. The the final bedroom graphics, with the side wall and the side mirror.

This is it for now, thanks for reading!

Stav

Hello everyone,

I thought maybe I should start from the beginning, so on this post I’m gonna give some background for the making of “The Splitting: Chapter 1”, and write about what brought me to some of the ideas in the game.

Some background:

So, I have been trying to make a game on my own for a few years now, ever since I finished my game design studies. I started out with some big ideas for big games, which never made it through the early stages of development, and it took time to both polish my skills and overcome my tendency to over-scope.

About a year and a half ago I started working on a small point and click adventure game, which was given the temp name “Sewer Fairies”. I actually had pretty high hopes for this one, but it had two major problems –

1) It had an outrageous amount of graphics to it, and barely any story. halfway into the development I lost motivation, because I had so much graphics to create, but not enough story to make me feel connected to the game. I’m not saying that everyone needs a story in their game, but it’s definitely something I need to keep me going.

2) Because it was the first chapter of the game, I took an approach of “saving the best for last” – I had some great ideas for the next chapters, but thought they were too “crazy”, and that in the first chapter I should be easing the players into things. But what actually happened was that the first chapter became kind of dull, and didn’t have any of the cool stuff that was supposed to make the game special.

“Sewer Fairies”

So… before starting my work on “The Splitting”, I have already decided I should keep the graphics to a minimum, and focus mainly on the plot and riddles. This decision helped a lot, because it let me spend more time on the part that I love most about making games – creating worlds and stories. It also helped me decide on the graphic style, a simple pixel art style, instead of the time consuming hand painted style I used for “Sewer Fairies”. The second problem of “Sewer Fairies” was going to hit the first chapter of “The Splitting” as well, but that will happen much later.

Inspiration:

the first inspiration source for “The Splitting” has actually been running around in my head for more than a decade – ever since I played “Zork: Grand Inquisitor”, a first person point & click adventure from 1997. At some point in the game you enter your sidekick’s bedroom, and find out you are able to pass through the mirror into a “secret mirror room”, which involves a cool riddle where you have to connect two scroll parts, one of which is reversed. I remember loving the idea, and being sorry that the game did not develop it any further. Also, while playing, I have noticed that when you approach the mirror you don’t see your reflection in it. This fact is kinda taken for granted, maybe because an invisible player character is a consistent theme throughout the game – you never actually see yourself, and even your hands are invisible when lifting objects. But I still remember wondering – if you did have a reflection, would you still be able to pass through the mirror?

“Zork: Grand Inquisitor”

About 3 years ago, I submitted a short fantasy story to a short stories contest. The theme was “reflections”. My story was about a man on his first few weeks in prison, who discovers that his cell mate sometimes disappears at night. One night, when his cell mate is gone, he looks through his stuff and finds a big mirror, hidden under the mattress. He tries to enter the mirror himself, but can’t figure out how to do so, so he waits for his cell mate to return and then threatens to break the mirror unless he tells him his secret. The cell mate then reveals to him that you can’t pass through the mirror unless you get rid of your reflection, since your reflection is what physically stops you from passing. The story didn’t win the contest, but it was a beginning for the game’s idea, and also an inspiration for Mitchell and llehctiM’s story.

One more important topic in the game is the one of parallel worlds. Now, when I try to remember where I first became interested in it, I discover that it was also while playing “Zork: Grand Inquisitor”! It seems I owe this game a lot more then I thought, and only realising it now…

In Zork, we come across the ruins of a once prospering magic university. All that’s left of it now is an old fountain. Near this fountain we discover a portal to a parallel dimension – “The ethereal plains of Atri”, where the university still exits in all its glory. The fountain, being the only thing in common between these two dimensions (though affected by the ravages of time in the real one), is in my opinion very meaningful. It functions as a link, and it’s no coincidence that the portal is placed right next to it.

“Zork: Grand Inquisitor”

What I really liked about this part of the game is the feeling you get when standing next to the fountain – You feel the existence of both dimensions at once. When you walk away, they grow further apart. In “The Splitting”, this is the exact same role of the mirrors, but here they function both as the portal and as the link between the worlds. A room with a mirror in it will look exactly the same as the “real” room, but a room with no mirrors will immediately start dissolving, going back to the chaotic nature of the mirror world. This will be even more obvious in the next chapters, when Daniel and llehctiM are travelling deeper and deeper into the “shadows” and away from the mirrors.

“The Splitting” – real study room and mirror study room 

Another version of this idea exits in the “Chronicles Of Amber” series, where Amber and the chaos are the only real worlds, and all that lies between them is just various reflections of the two. The further you get from Amber, the closer you get to the chaos, and your surroundings change accordingly. In this series, the worlds outside of Amber are called the shadows, for it is like the shadow that Amber is casting, similar in shape but not real. In “The Splitting”, rooms without mirrors are called “shadow rooms”, not because they are shadows themselves, but because they are not affected by the mirrors’ influence, and are hidden from the eye of anyone who’s standing in the real world looking through a mirror.

This is about it for now. In my next post I will write about the early design process of “The Splitting: chapter 1”. Thank you for reading!

Stav

Hi everyone,

My name is Stav, and I am the founder of Fireberry Studio. In this dev blog I will attempt to document the development process of
my games, and share some thoughts on game development, art and story-telling.

You are always welcome to leave comments and share your feedback.

See you around,

Stav