Mummy's Tale Level Design Part 3: The Aqueducts (First Half)

The player reaches the top of the aqueducts, and at this point, the scenery begins to get clearer, as  in the background, large statues of animal headed people can be seen in the background, looming over the player. They continue across the canal, facing another scorpion, and then the player reaches a gap in the road.

The camera zooms out, as a cutscene starts, showing the cat pulling himself up on the ledge before dashing off again. There’s a pan towards the bottom as Cleo looks down, showing the bottom is a mass of jagged, sharp rocks and other assorted debris that is almost certainly fatal to fall onto (And is). The camera scrolls up again, to put a background statue in view. It’s holding a long spear, that happens to be over the broken area. It’s a grapple point. As it returns to gameplay, it begins to glow, and the player can grapple onto it, starting the second variation of grappling, which is swinging from objects back and forth, using momentum to increase your swings. You’ll swing past the gap, and then two more, before you reach a stretch with three scorpions.

However, when you land, the screen begins shaking, as the section of the aqueduct that the scorpion is standing on gives way and collapses into the pits, taking the scorpion with it. You now only have to deal with two scorpions, both of which are separated by a jumpable gasp, so they can’t double team you.

Commentary

The reveal of the statues upon reaching the aqueducts is something that I wanted to be a big ‘WOW’ moment visually. To go from a dark, sand covered valley floor, to this area where you see all these large, grand looking statues towering over you. They serve several purposes, one of them being that it gives the impression to the player that this was clearly an important place of worship, and there was a civilisation here. Secondly, the statues go on to serve as obstacles or context for some of the grapple points you run into, to make them feel more natural. The statue spear being a grapple point is a key example.

The cutscene is something tricky. There’s alot of information I want to convey with this sequence, and i’m not too sure about how I can do it in gameplay alone. For starters, the hazard I chose was the jagged debris, a collection of wreckage from the local over the years, particularly from the fallen parts of the aqueducts and the statues. However, logically, it wouldn’t be tall enough to be visible from up high in the aqueducts, and zooming the camera out too far would be awkward for gameplay, since it would have to be zoomed during the whole segment.

The collapsing floor is both a fake out and foreshadowing of the final run. It fakes you out thinking that you’ll have to fight three scorpions at once, when it’s really two that are divided by separation. However, the fact that it collapses indicates the area is unstable, which comes into play during the run.