To Hide or Reveal?

As I receive testing feedback from players and start putting together the first parts of the next part of City (the second part, seeing as I have completely ditched what existed as the second part earlier), I start to get the opinion that I have absolutely no clue at all how exactly to build what it is I am trying to build.

Initially the game existed as a linear adventure game with lots of bonus stuff to do just for fun, but the more I've worked on it, the more I've given these bonus things *effect* in the game world, and what once existed as strange easter eggs for the player to find now have real gameplay and story consequences.

But then I realized how well some of these things are hidden, and I realized that some really major subplot stuff depends on players following some pretty well hidden clues.

Now, I love putting little easter egg jokes in games. Absolutely adore it. Nothing pleases me more than somebody saying in a comment or an email that they noticed a little joke I've hidden in the game and knew what it meant. There are some jokes in my games that I doubt a single person has actually found yet, and some that I completely forget about until someone tells me they found it.

But the things in City are no longer just little jokes to make you smile. There are actual *reasons* for these things now, aside from a little wink to the player. And I worry that I've hidden them too well.

Test reports have been interesting so far. It's fun to see someone's reaction when they try something and find a secret and let me know about it - it makes it feel like it's actually worth putting these things in the game. But I think, going forward, rather than making one main path with a bunch of hidden stuff, I'm going to focus less on hiding things and more on simply making more choice for the player. A lot of the choice stuff I've added in so far happens quite subtly and so you may not even realize that an element was triggered by your actions, which I think is in some ways a good thing and in some ways a bad thing. I want players to be aware that the things they do in this world have consequence, but at the same time I want it to feel as organic as possible.

In any case, this morning I added another subtle hint to a thing that provides hard to discover hints for two more things in the demo, one of which makes you a bit of extra cash and one of which (if you make a certain choice) could lead to you changing a character's life later on in the game.

And to think this was originally just a way to hide a fun animation in the game. The possibilities here for additional content are beginning to overwhelm me, and as daunting a prospect as this all is, it's also very exciting.

Once again I find myself with the feeling that I'm not trying to just build a game anymore, but a whole world of which you are allowed to see and influence a part of. That's a very powerful feeling, and one that fills my mind with concepts that I want to try.

Anyway, enough of my rambling, it's time to get back to painting. This world won't build itself, and I have so very much of it I want to let you experience.