Welcome, welcome and welcome back! Guess what everyone, today is another Cyberpunk level day!
We have yet another futuristic level on our hands, this time involving two robot criminals, a police precinct and plenty of fun puzzles to solve! Enjoy reading this week’s Behind the Doors level - Cyber Criminals ːsteamhappyː
Let us start by saying that this level had MANY concepts. And when we say many, don’t take it lightly. A total of three different door concepts had to be mashed together in order to create a prototype we could work with. The ideas were changing and shifting depending on where we wanted to go with the concept, so you could say we definitely took our time with this one.
Concept №1
The first concept was the most far off from the final design. And it only makes sense to have a very sketchy draft at first, we weren’t the first to work on a single instance for weeks without reaching a desirable outcome. Without beating around the bush too much, the first concept involved a woman in a cryopod. By all accounts, this idea sounds both intriguing and like it could have decent gameplay. Was she a criminal or maybe some cyberpunk superhero?
The answer, naturally, was that she was.. thrown in the bin with all the other concepts. No surprise there, but at least we liked the front face of the door - it was boxy, a lot of wires, cables and unexplained circuitry so it fit right into the vibe of the cyberpunk future.
Concept №2
So, moving onto concept number two. This time we had to take inspiration from somewhere and instead of looking outward towards the numerous media and art, we decided to get inspired by a previous level of ours. The idea was to make a “building” with a flying car parked inside it. Sound familiar? Well that’s because the Getaway Garage level (from Doors: Origins) had a broken down car you had to fix.
Although we liked the idea of a flying car, the space it was taking inside the diorama was not justified for the gameplay we had planned for it. We had to improvise, adapt and overcome in order to reach a reasonable conclusion for the car.
Concept №3
And that’s how concept three was born. One look is enough to understand where we were going with this - it was now a Police station and the flying car issue was also resolved. A vertically parked car was taking up waaay less space than one parked horizontally.
You might wonder why we turned the house/building/garage into a precinct. Well, the car was never thought to be more than just a random flying car, but giving the level a theme with the police car and jailhouse was definitely the direction we had been looking for. Seeing it in prototype was the little push that sprung all the ideas about robots, criminals and police chases flying all around the room.
In general, the final design was finished right after we had the gameplay covered, but our artists took it a step further by adding a dark and gloomy atmosphere to the brightly contrasting door. The background was inspired by dark cyberpunk movies such as Blade Runner and The Matrix, we wanted to express a sense of vastness to this level, make it feel like it’s a real station in a real city.
Thank You for reading this week’s Behind the Doors. Don’t forget to join our Discord to get notified about all our future posts and announcements, as well as chatting with the team and community!
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!
