Ladders and Mantling

Hey guys! While a lot of recent work has been on things behind the scenes, we have started to develop some new traversal mechanics.   Compound Fracture has and always will be a game about moving slowly and with intent. This means no jumping, sprinting, wall running, or anything of that nature. However, our commitment to this idea has led to rather dull level design, especially as we make maps more complex. You walk into a room, kill the enemies, take the items, and leave. Sometimes the rooms lead to other rooms through doors, but that's about it. Without items or enemies, rooms become either dead ends or glorified hallways. It became apparent that we needed more ways for the player to interact with the environment directly, especially in a game like ours where we can't have items and enemies around every corner.

Ladders are an obvious but surprisingly tricky mechanic to add. For one, there is still no standard for how ladders should work in a game. There is a wide spectrum of solutions and no single one works for everything. How does the player mount/dismount ladders and how does that affect their placement? What can the player do while on ladders? What happens if the player is attacked while on the ladder? If these problems are not solved correctly, ladders could risk making the game more frustrating and less enjoyable than if they were never there to begin with. However, with all of these challenges aside, ladders greatly expand the ways levels and rooms can be constructed. Without ladders, every floor and ledge must be accessed via stairs which not only gets old but requires a lot of space. Ascending or descending a ladder is a unique experience both mechanically and thematically that a series of steps simply cannot replicate.

Mantling was a tough mechanic to actually commit to adding. When most people think of mantling they probably think of games like Call of Duty 4 that popularized the mechanic, making it feel a bit "modern". However as many of you know, mantling dates back to games as early as Thief (1998), albeit in a more crude form. Regardless of if mantling is "era appropriate", it's important that we make Compound Fracture the best game it can be. The second we added mantling to the game it became hard to imagine a world without it. Mantling completely changes the way players process and interact with the environment without detracting from that intentionality that is core to the experience. Players can climb up ledges, vault over railings, and look for paths that aren't as obvious as a staircase. Our mantling system is also completely dynamic which means these actions are a part of the player's toolset for exploration and not merely thematic embellishments on what would otherwise be scripted sequences.  

These two mechanics in conjunction with the more interconnected level design we have been working towards make moving through the environment far more interesting than it would have been otherwise. Mantling and ladders allow for hidden paths, vantage points, shortcuts and more, which allow rooms to be more than just enemy and item closets.   

We hope this insight gives you some idea of what goes into adding mechanics like these and why they aren't added carelessly. What you don't add to a game is just as important as what you do, and it's important to remember that no mechanic, no matter how dearly you love it, is worth undermining a whole game over.

-Austin