Ramble I: Easter Bunny, Professional Level Designer

Preramble

Around the last few Easters, I kept finding myself thinking about Easter eggs in video games.

Not (as would be natural to assume) the developer-placed secrets, (though I love those too). Instead, I’ve been thinking about how our family’s annual Easter egg hunt reminds me of level design and how players engage with the environment. So I went and wrote a thing.

Easter Bunny, Professional Level Designer

On Easter morning, a variety of colourful plastic eggs appear in our home, poking out from behind book spines and from under bushes. We push away thoughts about that creepy bunny skulking around laying them, and instead enjoy the delightful chaos of kids prowling like young hunter-gatherers.

The best hunts strike a balance between three things: good hiding spots, clever egg positioning, and egg-weenies. [Originally ‘eggcrumbing’, which seemed like the worst portmanteau possible, but now we have egg-weenies… -Ed.]

Good hiding spots are interesting objects that are fun to investigate. They whisper, ‘Hey, pst, Buddy, I’ve got something to show ya...’ (but not in a Pennywise sort of way). Something can be interesting because it’s unique (a stuffed Gudetama), or requires extra attention (the cluttered knick-knack shelf), or stands out because it stands alone (the wilting potted plant in the corner). Good hiding spots also give a variety of ways to hide the eggs, making them interesting to investigate, even if nothing is there. 

Clever egg hiding also adds to the fun. Too visible and the hunt becomes a race, too hidden and you’re finding eggs on Thanksgiving. That still leaves a lot of wiggle room, from a yellow egg camouflaged in a bunch of bananas to a green egg-butt poking out from behind a red plaster butte. Finding the right balance turns every potential hiding spot into something to be investigated fairly thoroughly, with some having quick payoff while others take a bit of work. This variety leads to constant investigation and engagement.

Finally, a few egg-weenies can keep the hunt moving around. Egg-weenies (probably not whatever you’re thinking) is a pretty atrocious term for an ovoid version of the Disneyland Weenie - they’re something that calls from a distance, guides you (with fun distractions on the way) to a new location, and delivers more discoveries once you’re there. A bright purple egg balanced proudly on a wall outside sends all the kids running through the back door and gives them a whole new area (with all new hiding spots) to explore. 

In the end, the kids get a sugar rush, and I steal some jelly beans, munching on them while thinking about level design.

In videogames, an ‘egg’ can be any prize for the player, from much-needed resources to narrative collectibles. Good hiding spots require some additional thought – always consider the context, environment, and game rules; each game creates its own universe, and the ‘Easter egg hunt’ has to fit naturally within that specific world.

On one end of the spectrum is Astro Bot, a game of pure creative joy where great hiding spots abound. Giant robot holding a watering can? Great! Put a bot in it! The level design is linear and fairly focused, with clear boundaries that guide players through. This restricted path and lack of clutter make any object stand out as a potential hiding spot and worth investigating. While this could get old, these spots brilliantly leverage the core gameplay, so checking every tree or finding a way onto a slot machine is both enjoyable and almost always delivers a payoff. Astro Bot also does a great job of making those colourful prizes cleverly peek out. Bright boxes and dancing bots and shiny coins all encourage players to continuously examine the world itself, checking objects and locations from different angles to see if maybe there’s something worth finding. 

A grounded and realistic game presents different challenges. The Last of Us franchise has a similar level design to Astro Bot (when reductively reduced to ‘get through the level and collect stuff on the way’), but they also have a highly detailed environment that could overwhelm players in their search for trading cards and rolls of duct tape. By embracing the groundedness of the world and hiding goodies in logical places, the game gives players the tools to make smart decisions about where to look. A bathroom would have pills, a gas station has a workbench, and a gamer’s bedroom would obviously have an energy drink can. By embracing the context of the world, the game design guides players naturally in their hunt.

An open world magnifies these problems but relies on similar solutions, while also being able to take advantage of weenies to great effect. The Elder Scrolls series (special thanks Oblivion Remaster for late-night destractspiration [Sorry. -Ed]) is one of many examples. Players can go almost anywhere and find almost anything, including the mundane (someone needs those callipers and tongs, right?). Along their travels, they catch glimpses of many alluring locations that beckon from the main path and are great weenies. Consider the spired building on top of a distant mountain that will… ahem… pique the player’s interest. Once there, not only do they get the delightful prize of a cool new house, but from the top is a grand view of the surrounding world dotted with more locations calling the player to investigate.

One last masterclass example - Zelda: Breath of the Wild, where the game manages to bring all these ideas together at almost every turn. Hyrule is littered with interesting hiding spots, plenty of prizes, and many, many layers of weenies.  Often, the layers of the hunt overlap beautifully, from the macro to the micro scale. Consider one example I found in a quick scrub of a full playthrough: a pond will always grab attention, and from there, the chests on a dock are both prize and weenie, since from chests, it’s a pretty good angle to notice a nearby puzzle and get a Korok. This very small example of weenieception [Sorry again. -Ed.] is just one of many upon many that lead the player through the world, and is covered very well (with other great insights) in this short bit of required reading from GMTK.

This is all just a surface scratching, but I had the itch, so here it is. I’ve found that design inspiration comes from everywhere, and like the Easter egg hunt, with good hiding spots and clever positioning, we can weenie players around [Really? -Ed.], guiding them to explore our worlds, one colourful egg to the next to the next to the next...

Postrambles

• Art provided by talented middle child, Cup O’ Soup.

• At some point, I went on an aside and created an eldritch history of the Easter Bunny, “cursed by the Ancients to hide eggs he can never enjoy himself, forced to look on with envy. The Easter Armadillo was sacrificed to the ancient gods after years of hiding the eggs too well. The Easter Tortoise just left them buried in a pile in the middle of the sandbox.” I have absolutely no memory of writing this.

• In TLOU, I found it neat that, with comic books, they had a way of making something colourful that stands out in a fairly muted world while still fitting the context of the world itself. It was a nice example of an appropriate colourful ‘egg’ that also doesn’t feel out of place.

• Empty space and patterns are other ways games can guide the player’s attention. BOTW uses both of these very smartly – sparse fields and hills show at a glance what isn’t worth checking out while also drawing attention to anything unique, especially things in an unnatural pattern like a perfect ring of rocks.

• At one point I also bent over backwards to try to work in the fact that kids who like black jellybeans are, by their nature, chaotic evil. This I stand by.