Design of secret zones in Rayman Legends

Stanislav Kostyuk, a game designer at Ubisoft, in his blog talked about how secret zones are made in Rayman Legends and how they are interesting.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been stuck on Rayman Legends. Do you know, there are some games that you play a little bit and realize that they are cool, but for some reason you can’t get into them for a long time? Rayman Origins and Legends are just such a case. And just recently, I was finally able to play Rayman Legends and couldn’t tear myself away for a long time. This is an amazing game. With an excellent design, perfectly balanced, insanely creative and unrealistically addictive. The complete set! And the musical levels? You can’t just take it and not mention them. They’re magical. But in this particular post, I’m going to analyze how secret zones are made in Rayman Legends. All these things are very easy to screw up and make it so that the search will turn into an obligation or just get bored. But Rayman Legends did everything right.

The player in Rayman Legends must not only complete the levels, but also save all the kidnapped babies (teensies). There are either 3 or 10 of them in each level. And there are 700 of them in total. And at least half of them are hidden in secret zones. That is, there are a lot of babies in hidden locations. How did the creators of the game manage to make it so that looking for them is fun, not boring? Well, three components played a role here: level design, audio and user interface.

Let’s start with the level design. In Rayman Legends, secret zones are located very cleverly, plus the game is full of hints where to find these zones. But in addition, there is one important point: for the first few levels, the player is shown the basic principles of finding hidden locations, which teaches the user to search for these locations throughout the rest of the game.

It all starts from the very beginning, from the very first cut scene. They show a dragon flying around while monsters beat and kidnap babies. At the end of the cut scene, this dragon defiantly sweeps over the place where the cage with the babies is located.

The game starts very close to the secret zone shown in the cut scene. The way to the babies is slightly obscured by plants. So it turns out that the game gives lesson number 1 from the very beginning: there are special hidden locations to which a secret path leads.

A little later (for convenience, I will not dwell on the babies that the player finds as he passes the main level) we see a tunnel with plants. The game has already taught us that you need to crack them to collect lums (lums). So the player’s first impulse is to go and hit them.

As soon as the player does this, it becomes clear that the tunnel leads to a secret zone. Lesson number 2: There are landscape elements in the game that will disappear as soon as you approach them. There is definitely something hidden behind these elements.

Please note: in the background, a cage with lumas is guarded by a huge monster. You will not pass by, because it is reanimated.

As soon as we get to this location with the help of a throwing mushroom, the enemy and the cage go to the left and disappear from sight. Lesson number 3: Explore the level. It’s not always necessary to just go ahead.

A little later, the player sees a cave in which the playground attracts a little attention. The main path, which is indicated by lumens, clearly leads to the side. But it is still easy to get to the site using a moving platform. If the player is not attracted only by the fact that the playground is clearly there for a reason (and if he does not pay attention to the audio prompts, which will be discussed later), then an enemy will jump out at the player right in front of the playground and force him to lean forward.

After killing the enemy, the player will move forward – and voila – another baby! Lesson number 4: There may be something interesting hiding behind the objects in the foreground.

There is no secret zone as such in this location (the door that leads to the king of babies is not hidden), but the enemy is located in such a way that the player is forced to leave the main path. And it becomes clear that sometimes there are branches from the main road that lead to hidden locations.

This picture shows another type of hint – lighting. Plus a bug that crawls on the wall. This time, the site does not particularly attract attention.

Nevertheless, with the help of this location, the player learns to pay attention to the surrounding objects, to notice various hints and keys.

Here I would like to mention one more thing that the game teaches (not specifically at this location, but in general). In the course of the action, the player comes across turnips. If you hit them, you’ll get lumes. But sometimes these turnips are not what you expect. In this case, the enemy is there. So the player learns that not only a turnip can be dug out of the ground. Later, babies will start to come across there.

In the second level there is a location where the wall goes up. The camera in this location does not rise above a certain threshold, so you might think that there is nothing at the top. But if you look closely, you can see the edge of the flying cage with lumens. If you still climb up, the camera will move back and the player will see additional space. And here’s another lesson for you: sometimes secret locations are out of sight, so if it seems that the path leads somewhere, then most likely it is.

A little later there will be another exactly the same place. This time, the player will not be given any visual cues. However, since the player already knows what to expect, he will naturally want to go see if there is anything interesting there.

And, of course, there is a secret location there.

The first two levels end with another lesson: objects that can be destroyed are sometimes located on the edges of the screen.

If the player goes there, he will find a secret location.

Here the player finishes learning how to search for secret locations. All that comes after these zones is the consolidation of the material. For example, here we see that a branch from the main path is blocked by a wall of shards that can be destroyed.

But there are also platforms. They are also needed for something, right?

Right. They lead to another secret room.

Now the player has learned the basic ways to find hidden locations. And then, when these hidden locations become increasingly difficult to find, the process will not infuriate him, because he has already been taught that the difficulty level is gradually increasing.

And there are audio hints in the game. As soon as we approach the secret room or the kidnapped baby, we hear him calling for help. Or we hear a monster growling, which beats the baby. So the player knows that the baby is somewhere nearby. It should also be noted that when a user finds a hidden room, a very cool sigh of admiration is heard.

But the most important, in my opinion, part of this whole story with the search for 700 babies is how the process is displayed through the UI.

The number of babies found is not displayed as a number, but graphically. Each baby has its own icon, the location of which depends on exactly where the baby is on the level. For example, the very first baby at the level is assigned cell number 1, the second – number 2, and so on. The exception is the king and queen of babies. The screenshot shows that these two are always located in the center. But there is also a scheme here: the secret room with the queen is always the first on the way, and the room with the king is the second.

This is very important, because in this way it becomes clear when, and, more importantly, where you missed the baby. Imagine numbers instead of such a UI. Here you have found 9 out of 10 babies. Looking for the latter is very difficult, because you need to go through the whole level, and it can be anywhere! And if you have several such undiscovered babies at different levels? Immediately you know that if you have found baby number 2 and number 4, then it is approximately clear where to look for the third. And the process of finding all the babies becomes much more pleasant.

The design of the user interface also helps a lot in the middle of the level: if you missed something, you can go back and find the missed baby. Naturally, this only works at those levels where there is an opportunity to go back (almost everywhere).

That’s how Rayman Legends makes the process of finding hundreds of babies so easy and enjoyable. I remember when I first started playing Rayman Legends and saw that 700 babies had to be found there, I said to myself: “That’s a lot, I’ll probably never find them all.” Because in other games where it was necessary to collect items, the process was usually very boring, and I just didn’t sweat it.

But then I found everyone. Thanks to the design, it has never been boring. Of course, it helped that the game itself is cool, with cool levels. Although there are exceptions in the case of secret locations, too. This is part of the game called “Back to Origins” (Back to Origins).

Perhaps the point here is that the levels for this part had to be redone so that they correspond to certain mechanics and goals (such as finding 10 babies at each level, for example). I won’t say exactly what the difference is compared to Rayman Origins. To properly compare, you need to play the original game.

In “Back to Origins” there are several completely meaningless secret locations that go against what the game taught before. The first thing that comes to mind is the “This is a machine!” (Mecha No Mistake) level at the end of the “Back to Origins” campaign. The levels in Origins are divided into sections, and in the last section (from which it is impossible to go back) there is always the last baby. And so it is everywhere, except for the “This is a car!” level, where there are TWO babies, and one of them is far beyond the edge of the screen.

And it really pisses me off, because before that you go through 35 levels, where you know for sure: the baby in the cage is the last one in the location, and you don’t need to look for others. But it turns out that it is necessary, and only at this particular level. You think you’ve missed something, and you run the level again to collect all the babies on the first try… But it turns out that you didn’t miss anything.

Otherwise, all the secret levels are served in the game just fine, which makes you collect all the babies.

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Source: stanislavcostiuc.com

Translated by Irina Smirnova