Sifaytahm - New Puzzle Age Design

[AtionSong]

Cooked up a new age design last night.
Basic overview: Gameplay takes place inside a volcano, with focus on logical puzzle solving.

Pic, explanation/guide, and more below.

SIFAYTAHM
(from the D'ni "Sifay" of "Sifai", meaning "to wire" or "to power up" and the word "Tahm", meaning fire)


So, we begin at the link-in spot (obviously). This is at the bottom of a circular, rocky crater, with tall walls arching overhead. Forward is a hill with a staircase carved in the side. At the top of the hill is a hole with a long metal ladder downward.

Climbing down the ladder places you in the "entry way" of the cave system. To your left is a stream coming from a hole in the rockwall that crashes down in a gentle waterfall, into a little pool, and then into another hole in the bottom of a cavernwall off to the side. On the ground immediately before you is a drain, with a foot pedal. Pressing the pedal causes a cover to close on the drain (and pressing it again opens the drain up). To the right of the drain are two other pipes, but these two do not have the drain-grating on them. These also have pedals to cover (or uncover) the pipes. At the far right of the room is a plexiglass window held to the wall with a thick metal frame and studs. You can see that beyond the window is a rather dull looking room.

At the far right of the entry room is a metal door (this design is used several times for all the doors in the age). The door consists of a thick metal frame with studs, and the opening part is formed by two interlocking triangles. To the right of the door, on the wall, is a button which, when pressed, causes the door to slide open for five seconds, and then it shuts again.

After going through this door, you are in the "seal lock" room, a room that is very boring. The entire room is just solid metal, with a door to the left (the one you just walked through), one ahead, and one to the right. The one ahead of you leads to the observation room, the room that has the window to the entry room. The observation room is very simple, just a rock room with a window (and, of course, a door).

Walking through the door at the right of the seal room leads to a ladder downwards to the "pipe room". This is just a long cave with pipes running from the ceiling to the floor. Although boring on first glance, this room becomes very important to the puzzle-solving process of the age, as the location of the pipes (where they start and end) is actually very important.

At the left side of the pipe room, you find yourself at stairwell one, a spiral staircase carved into the stone, which goes a fair way down into the rock. At the bottom of the stairwell, there are two doors, one to the left and one to the right.

The door to the left takes you to a small room with a rope ladder that goes a long way up. Climbing it to the top leads to the stream control room. This room has a fairly simple interface - it is the room where the river runs before heading to the waterfall in the entry room. There is a lever that, when pulled down, causes a metal sheet to come downwards, cutting off the stream and stopping the waterfall (pulling it back up pulls the sheet back up).

Back to the bottome of stairwell one, taking the door to the right leads you to the largest room in the cave system, the Magma Room (NOTE: I know that I wrote Lava Room in the design, but I researched it, and Magma is Lava before it is erupted.). The room is a giant dome whose floor is a pool of molten magma. There are three pipes coming up out of the magma, and into the ceiling - one large one to the left, and two smaller ones to the right. I sort-of re-envisioned this since the drawing, but upon entering the room, you find yourself on a raised metal walkway (sort of like the walkway in the giant dome in Riven). The walkway does a circle around the entire room, and, on the far side, contains a console. The console contains three levers. Pulling any of them begins a loud mechanical sound, but no visual changes (Curious!). On the right side of the room, there is another door.

Behind this door is stairwell two, basically the same model as stairwell one.

At the bottom of stairwell two there is another door, behind which is the boiler room. This room contains the most "widgets" to mess with in the age. In the center is what appears to be a gigantic boiler, with a pipe leading upward. On the boiler is a slider, which is currently all the way on the left side of its panel. On the wall is a red lightbulb, which is currently off. Next to that is a glass case, under which is a big, shiny, red button (ooh, I know how much everybody wants to press big, shiny, red buttons!). Underneath the glass case there is a square cut out of the wall.

So that's the layout of the age. Have you figured out how to "solve" the age yet? Try to figure it out, then look below for the answer.

SOLUTION:
(Highlight below to reveal)
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The point of this age is to cause an eruption to occur. This involves several steps. To see if what you are doing is on the right track, you can head upstairs to the observation room and see what the entry room looks like.
1) In the entry room, the drain must be closed. If it is open, all the magma in the room drains out.
2) In the entry room, the two pipes must be open. This allows the magma to pass up through them into the room.
3) The waterfall must be turned off. Otherwise, the magma will steam (see outcomes below).
4) In the Magma Room, the second two switches must be in the up position. This is the control that allows magma to pass up through the tubes. The first switch is unimportant for an eruption to occur - flipping it up drains all the magma from the entry room (and automatically opens up the drain in the room).
5) In the boiler room, the slider must first be moved to about the middle position. This gives the magma above enough pressure to move upward into the entry room. The slider must stay in this position for about five minutes to fill up the room to an adequate level (see outcomes below). The progress of the filling can be watched from the observation room. (NOTE: Once the magma begins filling, the door to the entry room will not open).
6) After the entry room is full of magma, the slider in the boiler room must be turned to 100%. At this point, the red lightbulb will turn on.
7) The big, shiny, red button must be pressed. At this, the red lightbulb will begin to blink. Also, the square in the wall will slide around, revealing a linking book.

OUTCOMES:
A) THE "CORRECT" SOLUTION:
Steps 1 - 7 are correctly taken as described above. While the red light is flashing, the player uses the linking book. The player will link out momentarily to an age that is nothing but a room (similar to nexus, but much smaller) with another linking book, which they automatically link with (NOTE: This has nothing to do with the age itself, it is just used due to the mechanics of The Art).The link takes the player back to the same age, but this time on an island looking towards the volcano. They watch a majestic explosion of the volcano. Yeah! Puzzle Solved.
B) CORRECT SOLUTION, BUT NO LINK:
Steps 1-7 are correctly taken as described above, but the link in the linking book is not taken. The lightbulb continues flashing for about 30 seconds. After this point it stops, turns off, and an earshattering *BOOM* is heard. If the player is in the observation room, they see a bright flash of orange light, and when this is over, they can see magma flowing up against the window. Still technically a "correct" solution to the puzzle, and a nice little bonus experience once you see the eruption from afar.
C) WATERFALL NOT TURNED OFF:
All steps are taken, except "turning off" the waterfall. When this happens, there is not eruption, only a massive amount of steam coming from the mouth of the volcano (this will happen once magma enters the room, regardless of the other steps taken afterwards). The steam can be viewed either from the island reached through the linking book or the observation room. The problem can be fixed by first turning off the waterfall, then draining the magma from the room (see step 4 above).
D) NOT ENOUGH MAGMA
If all the steps are taken, but not enough magma is put into the entry room, when the eruption occurs, there will still be the loud boom, but those in the observation room will only see the magma shoot upward, and come down. Players observing from the island in the link will only hear the boom, but see nothing.
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So that's the basic design.
What do you all think?
Everything greatly appreciated: Questions, comments, concerns, expansion, concept art, ideas, everything.
Thanks.

[belford]

Assorted thoughts:

The nexus room at the end is inelegant, although I understand that you want to stick to the linking rules. (Better than Cyan has. :)

Maybe you could put it at the *beginning*; that would give the storyline some closure, which is always nice. Say you start in the tiny room. It's a Writing workshop; it has some hint/notes on the volcano mechanism, and some sketches and so on. It also has *two* linking books: one to your volcano link-in point, one to the distant observation island. The observation island is a dead end; there's clearly nothing to do, but you can see the volcano island on the horizon.

Then the question "what is this dead-end island for?" hovers throughout the play experience. It's answered at the end, when you realize that the volcano is exploding and you have a chance to see it from a distance. (Ideally you'd have a nice long eruption sequence -- twenty minutes of fire, the sky gradually filling with smoke, ash starts to rain down...)

(This also gives the player the chance to figure out that book 1 leads to the crater of the volcano he saw from the book 2 island. That doesn't have to be spelled out.)

As to the puzzle mechanics:

Do you have fallback paths for the player Reltoing out at every point? If the entry room is full of magma, and the player relinks, he has to be able to reset. I assume that means opening the entry-room drain. So that better be accessible from the crater.

Make sure all the controls that open the magma drain -- in the entry room, in the magma room, and (if you do this) in the crater -- are strongly themed to resemble each other.

You also have to account for the player relinking during the eruption. Since that's timed, it doesn't affect the game logic -- you just make the crater unenterable for those 20 minutes -- but you'll need graphics for standing there watching the blast.

Just a touch more feedback: put windows in the vertical pipes. Make it clearly visible whether magma is flowing through them, and in which direction. That will make the effect of the switches clearer. In fact, I'd add a second layer of feedback: a (different) blinking light or spinning gauge for as long as the entry chamber fills. When it's full, the blinky or spinny stops.

What's the reset path for the "not enough magma" outcome? After the bang, is the drain open? Does the slider reset to zero?

(Same questions apply to the full eruption.)

The "not enough magma" outcome probably needs more divisions. Many players will try moving the slider to halfway, and then (when nothing obvious happens) immediately moving it to 100%. In that case -- say, less than 30 seconds of fillage -- you should get a "poof", not a "bang".

[belford]

One more thought: ladders in Uru are slow and boring. Might make that long vertical shaft an elevator platform instead.

[AtionSong]

Had a solution within linking mechanics to prohibit people from linking in when the eruption is taking place - the "button" before that controlled the reaction should be KI activated. Then, if the player reltos out and then relinks to the starting age (that you described above), there is a KI activated mechanism that gives access to the book. If the KI has been used to start the eruption, then it will register that in the KI activation machine, and the book to the age cannot be accessed.

[belford]

And if someone else's KI has been used to start the eruption?

Just blocking things off seems both inelegant and unclear to the player. ("Great, now the Age is broken.") Even if you didn't want to do a full set of close-on eruption graphics, you could have the player link into an opaque cloud of fire and panic-link out instantly. That'd be dramatic.