Welcome to Behind the Doors - your favorite weekly blog about all things Doors!
Since we’ve been going strong with the cyberpunk doors, why not write up a third one for good measure? This time introducing Big Beats ready to groove up your day.
This is the second music-themed door we created, the first one being Music Mystery (yes, very original) from Doors: Origins or most commonly known around here as the Piano. We took a somewhat different approach when we started designing the concept. Just because we already had a musical level did not mean we would try recreating those ideas and incorporating them into this door.
Initially, the idea was to have somewhat of a disco or club, where we could include a dance party or those cool timing games, where you press arrows with your feet. It sounded really cool on paper, but it didn’t translate to success in reality.
A lot of the design has stayed similar throughout the brainstorming process. A quick thing to note, is that the platform has been the same for all four cyberpunk levels. It gives us good ground to work on (pun intended) and lets us be consistent, while also trying new stuff. One curiosity we removed totally was the little TV screen noticeable in the back face of the prototype. We had an idea to put a puzzle there, but as you will see later on, the puzzle chosen was far too big to fit inside such a small screen.
Abandoned Nightclub of the future
As you can see, the big cassette was always there - we didn’t really know what to do with it, but we knew it would be included in the gameplay one way or another. This version of Big Beats definitely looked more run down than usual. In fact, the whole concept revolved around creating an “abandoned nightclub of the future”. It was going to be your typical broken glass, trash everywhere disco, but later You, the player, would have turned it to a presentable and busy hangout spot for the cool kids in the block.
The Helper and The Dancefloor
The Helper, as you might have already guessed, was this little helper robot you can see in the GIF above. We wanted to include a robot but we got sick of the humanoid C3PO-style machines and went for a little something along the lines of the vacuum cleaner bot. Its intention was to open up the dance floor once the player completes a certain gameplay mechanic we don’t wanna spoil yet.
And so the rundown beaten club no one talked about was suddenly the talk of the town - the lights are shining, the music is blasting and the player is ready for the newest puzzle.
The front design remained the same as the prototype, the difference was in the details we included around and into the door. The lanterns resemble Chinese paper lanterns, but with a sci-fi twist of adding an emissive material. The labels and writings were neon with faux scribbles, which were also made to resemble Japanese hieroglyphics.
The puzzle we added is a timing-based click mechanic, which was originally inspired by the amazing rhythm game Osu! we are all big fans of. The prototype idea of a party dance game got transformed to the similar rhythm puzzle, with the exception that the dance floor is still a great place to bust some moves and have a good time.
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If you enjoyed our demo and want to see more from Doors, check in with your favorite puzzle streamers, because plenty of them are already playing an exclusive 15-level version!
