This is far from the first level I've worked on -- I have 6 that I've started, and concepts for others that I haven't begun building yet -- but it
is the first level I've managed to complete "enough" to release. It was designed for and entered into
the latest KS Level Design competition, the deadline for which forced me to just 'get it done already.' (Sometimes having a deadline is a good thing.) I suppose "first level, be gentle plz" applies.
Partly because I lost track of the competition end date
, I wound up having to cut some of the elements I originally planned to include, in particular a more-complex puzzle, and a shift-scene at the beginning of the level. I will eventually be releasing a version 2.0 with the full puzzle I originally envisioned, though, along with additional areas, further tileset tweaking, more COs & custom sounds, an enemy or three that players will have to actually work to avoid (!), and other bells and whistles.
Later this week, I'll be releasing version 1.1, which will mostly just take care of bugfixes. If you find any errors other than the ones already noted,
please let me know so I can correct them for the revised release. I'd rather not clutter up the level archive with five revisions when I can just save up the corrections and do one or two pre-2.0 releases.
- the flowers in the far-left screen intended to be unclimbable can, with some difficulty, still be climbed, leading to a void;
- those flowers don't continue into the screen above (oops, just plain forgot that!) leading to the stems being wallswimmable;
- the sign in the rightmost screen is missing (a hazard of editing the world.ini manually);
- a few screens which ought to have at least a firefly or two, don't;
- one of the birds in the screen with the upper half of the dome can wander out of place;
- behind the scenes, I never got round to editing the info-bars on the tilesets to indicate I had modified the originals Sal made;
- there's an insignificant SGE in a significant screen caused by a stray tile underneath a transparent tile; and
- the icon for the level somehow vanished from the .knytt.bin file.
The contest called for levels to "be about Juni being trapped somewhere and ... trying to get out" and "feature at least one puzzle element."
So, in
Which Way Out?, Juni finds herself in an unfamiliar landscape, and has to figure out how to escape. I think some
screenshots are in order:
Here's the level icon, also:
If you save
Icon.png into your \Knytt Stories 1.21\Worlds\the Jack - Which Way Out\ folder, the icon will show up on your KS level selection screen. (The icon won't show up on the level archive for v1.0, although -- hopefully -- it will for v1.1 once I upload the revision.)
Level FeaturesAudio: All sounds (other than Juni's footsteps and jumps) were recorded by members of the United States Fish & Wildlife Service as part of their official duties, meaning the recordings are in the public domain; each ambiance track was remixed by me specifically for WWO? using these FWS files and Audacity.
No default ambiance or music tracks were used.Custom Objects: All custom objects were created by me (some based on elements in Sal's tilesets).
Cutscenes: The default "Level Start" and "You Win!" text-on-white cutscenes have been replaced with full-colour, multiple-screen intro and ending sequences. (I ran out of time, so the intro is still fairly plain, but I think the ending makes up for it.)
Level Splash: The default blank title screen that's displayed when a level is selected in KS (with the angular grey spiral graphic) has been replaced with a full-colour image displaying the level name
and all the level's credits info.
Savepoints: Frequent save locations -- in nearly every screen -- encourage fearless exploration.
Tilesets: Camaska high, Crystal land, Green land and Green plants; all four created by Salmoneous / Elder, with modifications by me.
No default tilesets were used.
HintsSince some of the early players had trouble figuring out what to do...
Copied from a comment I left in the competition thread, here are some hints to point players in the right direction:
You'll need to pay careful attention to some things we're used to thinking of as just part of the scenery.
The visual and audio elements were carefully chosen to serve as part of the puzzle.
Not every single tile, track etc. is part of the puzzle -- some of them are just for that Scenic quality -- but some of them are part of the puzzle/s.
The "tagline" of the level (the smidgen of text that appears underneath the level name on the level select screen in KS) was intended to point you in the right direction.
(Yes, I know most people don't pay attention to those.)
Which Way Out? If only there were someone you could ask...
Does it seem like anyone -- or anything -- is trying to tell you something?
A word of warning -- It probably
is possible for at least some players to "brute-force" (or "dumb-luck") their way through the level rather than figuring out each part of the puzzle, just as a determined-enough (or lucky enough) player can get past symbol-combination locks in KS simply by entering every single possible code until the barriers open. Like "solving" a Rubik's cube by peeling off and repositioning the coloured stickers, however, doing so misses the whole point of the puzzle.
Finally,
Which Way Out? also marks the inaugural use of
the Scenic category tag.
