SoulMiner development details, The Renitent Scientist

In the overview the main features of the game are summarized. Some deeper technical and conceptual aspects and design choices are shared here.

/More a framework or engine than a particular implementation/

Long term goal: other non-conventional input methods/VR.

User interaction: Each level has its own mechanics and evolution, nothing is static on the scene. Most mines are performing their own smooth, circular, ever changing motion patterns. The player is also moving on rounded, roughly predictable wave-like orbit around (or inside) a mine. Gaze direction and zoom level is also The player also has multiple gestures to interact with the level (rotating the mine for example) and altering her own position, but it costs energy (configurable per-level). This mechanism ensures that she will rely on the natural mechanisms

Modular structure

In order to keep the player interested and avoid repeating the same challenges the game is designed to be entirely modular. All main aspects can be modified or replaced to make each level unique. From lighting to mine structures , spawned mineral sets, motion configurations and many others are created to be composable for each level in a mix and match manner. Even game logic code pieces can be mixed in by drag and drop when deeper customization is required.

Goal, scene setup and control variants

The original level type used to be the closest analogy of 2D matching games. The “tiles” can be accessed from all perpendicular directions, there are no “external” scene obstacles. The mine is however in permanent motion, making precise touches a challenge itself. Even this basic layout would allow creating arbitrary number of different levels and difficulties by varying the grid structure, minerals and all other modular features.

With the modular structure we can however easily create significantly diverse level types that differ even at the conceptual level from the basic “collect gems” scenario. These will serve many purposes: They fit to the the main story and support it by revealing new pieces of it. They also give rhythm to the sequences of levels avoiding monotony. Just as important is that they are designed for different skills, so they balance the challenges and difficulties among various player types. Everyone will meet levels best suiting them at every few steps on their journey.

Some of the potential variants are highlighted below. Please recognize the difference in their goal/mission, static/dynamic nature, positive/negative/neutral relation to the environment, difference in optimal strategy (act as fast as possible vs. search patiently for good spots), their purpose (challenge the player vs. teach her), etc. See the image captions for details.

A foating free mine — Floating free mine
The closest analogy of 2D matching games: Accessible from all sides, no external objects restrict its visibility. Stones (the red-black rocks) are usually used to reduce connected formations, also make touches more challenging.

Game scene with constrained mine — Constrained mine
A tougher variant of the floating mine. The surface covers from one side, surface objects appear in front of the orbiting camera. User's slide gestures are usually mapped to rotating the mine.

Guided game tutorial — Guided tutorials
The basics are taught to the player on specially crafted levels. A tutorial engine evolves and controls every aspect of the mine expecting limited interactions from the player, while explaining both the story and the player's tasks.

Demolish game type — Demolish games
Finishing a level has additional condition of breaking down some stone construct. It requires energy that the player has to gather from energy rich minerals. At some levels the stones are subject of natural erosion so patience also pays off.

Surface games — Surface hunt
Mineral hunt from a static mine. The very few grid positions make emergent formations rare, promoting 'patience' to optimal strategy, also teaching to use all tricks to catalyze mine's natural evolution. Motion gestures alter the player's orbiting motion.

Puzzle levels
Special mines with pre-defined content. No spawning or evolution happens. The goal is to clean it entirely, but taking minerals in a wrong order leaves unremovable 'orphan' objects resulting in failure. Dedicated editor tools assist in designing such levels.

Inner view levels — Inner View Levels
On some levels a **reverse arrangement** is applied. The camera rotates inside the mine, the objects surround the player. Since most of the level is out of view, good memory is a great help on these levels. Setting camera motion highly excentric made the game even more difficult in this vulcano level.
These layouts are especially suitable candidates for VR games.

Levels with custom dynamics — Custom Dynamics
The entire behavior and dynamics can be completely changed via per-level logic plugins. On extreme dynamic levels entire regions can move together not just individual minerals. This makes new formations appearing suddenly, while existing ones will vanish if the player does not fast enough.

Excavation levels
The player does not need to demolish constructs entirely, but she needs to dig some reward object or level pass key out to succeed. Those reward objects are designed to have importance throughout multiple levels (acting e.g. as keys). The challenge may be hardened if the location is not immediately obvoius from the outside.

Cooperative environment
The player cannot solve the level on its own, he needs to act in sync with the environment's dynamics. In this example he does not have enough energy to melt all the ice cubes, but acting when the floating shiny objects heat nearby ice cubes requires much less energy.

Survival levels
The environment is lethal, collecting minerals here is secondary. The primary goal of the player is to prevent some minerals reaching the lava lake. Minerals with energy content would raise the lake's level that in turn starts flooding the scene.

Thematic levels
Not only identical minerals can be matched, but players are not always aware of other options. Specific levels can be built around these alternatives to get them practice. Three different ordinary pebbles can be blended that in turn spawns only one of the fourth type. Getting familiar with this technique the player can make room in crowded mines. This level focuses only on this phenomenon.

Lighting variants

We can achieve a significantly different level by only tweaking the light and fog conditions. Besides improving aesthetics, the same arrangement can be tuned from easy to challenging by merely changing light conditions. While everything is in motion and you have milliseconds to act, colors and contrasts may stand between win and failure.

The final lighting is composed of both Unity’s scene lighting features and the light sources added to the mine and the player. These are implemented together as per-level light conditions and can be ‘drag’n dropped’ to any of our level designs after tuned once. Some examples to light (and difficulty) variations:

Dark game scene scenarios — Dark ligthing options
The same scene under different lighting conditions can be an easy challenge or a nightmare. Some objects with similar shapes are hard to distinguish even if they have moderately different color or texture. Power-ups with light boosting ability become invaluable. Combining different lighting profiles with altered mine yields or mine skeletons, multiple levels can be built around the same scene.

Light game scene scenarios — Bright lighting options
In bright scenes the light settings still allow to tune the level's difficulty. Dominant directional light makes it periodically more and less visible as the camera orbits. Varying fog density also requires more focus from the player. Note, that sometimes making distinction between some minerals and the hosting rock tiles becomes challenging.

‘Live’ tuning of the lighting while the game is running:

Mineral types

The minerals that you find on the levels – by the story – are more or less living creatures depending on where they are actually on their multi-century evolution process and much they already absorbed life under these extreme circumstances like heat and pressure. Other than that, minerals belong to different categories:

bulk minerals: The majority of those you ever meet. They can be taken by woken up (touching them) in correct formations. Some of them also have energy or oxygen content.
The player needs to know what formation is required to take them. Some of them can be taken simply in pairs, for taking others you need at least three identical neighbors. (More complex formations are also defined, but – since too many forms confused players – they became optional, now giving some bonus. E.g. when the player takes five coals forming a cross, etc.)
rocks, walls: These occupy predefined positions of the mine and come in different flavors. Some of them are completely invulnerable, others can be completely destructed in multiple steps – usually at some cost of energy. (A few can be destructed only with different tough metals like titanium, that needs to be mined first… but players won’t meet them in earlier levels to avoid confusing them.)
rare minerals: These items appear only occasionally in mines. On some levels they are not even spawned randomly like other minerals, but created as a “reward” in reacting to some game event or user’s accomplishment. Rare minerals can serve as entrance condition to later levels, but they are also used as power-ups. There are multiple “super-powers” these crystals can have from emitting light, to multiplying energy.
hostile minerals: Later levels can be made increasingly more difficult if we start punishing missed touches. A few specific minerals are spawned in the mine that the player should NOT ever touch. The negative effect is adjustable from exploding the direct neighbors and draining player’s energy to being even instantly lethal. They can however be part of the strategy, by sacrificing some energy, the player can demolish walls with their help. Others, like ozone although hurt the user’s energy but provide oxygen, in critical situations may be worth touching.
immaterial: Some objects cannot be collected or touched by the player, still behave like others in the mine (occupy a grid position for themselves, rotate with the mine and obey the same mine evolution rules). These objects still can have an impact on their neighborhood by their presence. (Through their heat or electric effects.)

A major design principle is to avoid confusing the player despite having many different minerals. By design there are only few things that really need to be remembered about them. Besides that, detailed information is available in multiple forms during the game. (A mineral catalog is available while playing, also immediate access is available to the last touched mineral’s page.) The players attention is also driven to new mineral types whenever a level brings a new one. Some visual clues help with the most important properties (see in screenshot below)

Lapidarium scene — Lapidarium
A development scene where good - and bad - visual ideas are tested. For mineral candidates different versions are created, sorted and selected.

Mineral creation — Creating minerals
Minerals in the game have a functional, hierarchical structure. The selected candidates are transformed with some editor scripts.

Mineral icons — Examples
A few selected minerals from the game. The top two lines mostly contain 'normal' collectibles. Under them are some special gems, hostile items and brick/wall minerals. The icons are created for appearing on the belt and the mineral catalog.

Special minerals
Examples of special minerals and items. Identical shaped minerals differing only in texture belong to weaker and stronger version of the same effect. Some metals are shown in the bottom row, these may be required to demolish tougher rocks at later levels.

Mineral page
Properties of the minerals can be fine tuned by category. Now, after experimenting the design direction is **simplification** however.

Mineral description — Mineral info
The player can bring up detailed info about minerals. 'One click' for a selected one or the entire catalog can be browsed.

Selection color — Visual clue
The glowing color of marked minerals shows the required formation size: yellowish color tells that this mineral can be taken in pairs.

Minerals in Blender — Shapes
Several shapes are tested before allowed into the game. (Must be distinguishable, low poly, etc.) Multiple steps are automated.

////Crossover rules

Power-ups and the belt

For each challenging component of the game (light conditions, levels motion, time and resource pressure, etc.) there are assigned power up properties that can be freely configured to rare minerals. They should not make the game too easy however, so some rules apply. Although they may get further fine tuning, after experimenting with multiple variants the main rules seem to be well balanced.

For ensuring easy access the player can bring only a few minerals to the game no matter how much he owns. They are shown at the lower edge of the screen in an area called “the belt”. By default the belt has only three slots for minerals (power ups), but bigger ones may be earned as rewards on later levels or offered as IAP.

Power-ups are activated on the belt by touching them. The remain active for a limited period after which they need some time to rest up. Also, we do not want them to completely eliminate the corresponding challenge from the game, so with each activation they wear off (they loose some fraction of their weights) an vanish when fully exhausted.

The belt can be configured before the entering a level. How much from the owned crystals the player wants to place on the belt. Since during the game the new special crystals can also be collected only by placing to an empty slot (of throwing those already occupying a slot), the player needs to make strategical decisions: does she expect to find new crystals and leaves room for them or should she fully pack the belt.

Belt with power-ups — The belt
A three slot belt at the bottom edge of the screen. All slots are filled. The remaining mass of power-ups is displayed. The middle slot is activated, remaining time is shown.

The belt config scene — Belt config
Before starting a new level the player can choose which power-ups she takes to the game. The items are transferred between the stash and the belt by touching them. The amount of oxygen and energy taken to the level is configured similarly.

Belt config with hints — Config hints
We do not require the player to remember the purpose of each crystal. The hint button marks the crystal icons with their 'super power' (the blue text). The white instruction scrollie also comes up helping with general instructions.

Effect of elevation power-up — Elevation
An example usage. Elevation effect is a rare power-up. It comes handy for mines that are placed in holes or are surrounded with surface objects. For 'levitating' the mine for a while, it gets more accessible for touching.

Configuration of power-ups — Configuration
The different 'super-powers' can be assigned to a crystal independently. The capabilities can have different strengths, so weaker and stronger crystals can be created for the similar purpose. After testing many variations, now the direction is **simplifying the power-up** structure. Some of them have already been merged, others may be removed from the final release.

Story

The player wakes up in a hell like environment. Before fully regaining consciousness and her vision clears, a blurred figure welcomes and tells briefly what happened and what this world is. Basically, a kind of underworld (described in a religion-agnostic way) where the dead souls finally arrive and are cleansed, sorted at extreme pressure and temperature before they are ready to their next journey. The entire area with bodiless souls and evolving minerals is nurtured by people being stuck between the two worlds.

Later, throughout the game it becomes clear to the player that in the abyss there is no clear distinction between living and lifeless material, everything is pervaded by those souls, although not uniformly. Step by step her mission is revealed: very few has ever made it out yet, but the only possible way to get back to her world and her enervate unconscious body is to collect all the most intensely soul-filled minerals that the human body is made of. (Collecting all possible formations of rare minerals during her journey while completing the sequences of levels.)

Tutorials

To make it easier to introduce both the story and the new concepts, the game contains an internal “engine” that takes control over game events, processes and – when needed – user’s control in a scripted manner leaving only parts of it to the user. Meanwhile description is provided about the story and the new things to learn.

Technical details

Level definition

For maximal flexibility….

Skeleton, predefined minerals, valid grid positions, assigning to level, editor tools, make video

Minerals definition

Main properties, categories (overview goes above the tech part),

Areas and navigation, reentrant play

Instead of having one long sequence the game is divided into ‘areas’. 10-20 levels belong to each one. When entering a new area only a few levels are revealed to the player. Completing them successfully reveals new ones. Opening a revealed level has an assigned cost that the player must pay for the privilege to enter. This is expressed in minerals and other resources that she needs to collect. This decision brings some ‘economy’ and strategy above the levels and avoids monotony by simply completing them one by one.

The navigation screen tells the properties of the mine and the entrance cost that the player can accept or refuse. Note, some mines are not mandatory to complete, however skipping them also skips potential rewards.

Sometimes the player may need to go back to earlier mines to collect the ‘entrance fee’ for a new one. The navigation scene helps with information, mine names, screenshots to recognize which one the player wants to enter again.