How I Used GMTK's Boss Keys To Design My Puzzle Game

Disclaimer: This isn't exactly an announcement about Epiphany City, but rather just a piece I've been wanting to write for a long time and had nowhere else to put it. Note that this does contain spoilers for Epiphany City- however most of these images were made at the start of development so there have been many changes to each area since then. Of course, the core concepts remain the same.

I've been a fan of Mark Brown's Game Maker's Toolkit for over 4 years now. One of the earliest videos I remember watching was one of his famous Boss Keys videos, where he elegantly laid out the design of each Zelda dungeon. I was thus inspired to use these learnings in my own indie game, and as a Patreon subscriber I also got access to the icons and layouts that he used in his videos. So here's the general design sentiment behind each area of Epiphany City.

Steam post image ^Click here for one example of Mark Brown's Boss Keys series. You probably want to watch one of these first to understand the graphs in this article.

Ocean Dungeon

Initially, Epiphany City only had 3 main gameplay areas, which are basically outdoor dungeons. We wanted them to not only scale in complexity, but offer more freedom and rewards for exploration. This made sense as not only would the player get more comfortable with the game, but also Lily, our game's protagonist, would improve and grow her world-manipulation powers.

Mark Brown states in his Boss Keys videos that a wider graph suggests more freedom of exploration, as it allows the player to tackle obstacles in almost any order they wish. On the other hand, a tall and narrow graph suggests linearity- there is no way forward except to get the first key first, then the second key second, and the third key third.

So with this in mind, the first Ocean area starts narrow, and slowly widens. There is only one way to solve the first section and it requires you to get what you need in a specific order. But the second section allows the player to equally choose one of two paths to go down, and the third is a complete release of linearity as the player can tackle any piece of the final puzzle in any order. This not only adds variety as the player progresses, but matches their comfortability with the game and puzzles as they increase in skill.

Full Map here:

Click here for a more detailed map breakdown.

Regardless, the layout of the Ocean is rather simple, and it serves as a good opener for players to explore.

Sky Mountain

Originally named very simply as just "Town", this area adds more complexity into the mix. Not only does it introduce an evolution of the game's main puzzle mechanic, but splits the map into two sections. Either section can be completed in either order, and as long as the player reaches the end in both sections they can unlock the final screen.

See a full breakdown of both sections here.

Bloom National Park

Lastly, we come to the "Park", which is absolutely freeform, with almost no linearity at all. The player is able to do any screen in basically any order, and can even leave one halfway through to complete another if they so choose.

Full breakdown here.

However, those of you who have played Epiphany City already will know that this isn't quite the same in the final game. This is due to the fact that early playtesters often got lost, confused, and frustrated as they didn't know where they were supposed to go or what parts of the map led to other parts. I am positive a better designer than myself could've still made all of this work, but alas, I was young and inexperienced, so I simply gave the area more structure. And it all seemed to work out anyway, as Bloom National Park is generally regarded as the best area in the game.

Well, tied with Sky Mountain at least.

Now, we did end up going back and adding one more area, which ended up being the perfect demo / prologue to the main game. It had all the creative, out-of-the-box puzzles and meta-level surprises that the rest of the game had, but it did so without any confusion or interruptions to flow statedue to its extremely linear design:

If you want to experience that for yourself, you can play our Prologue for free here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1593730/Epiphany_City_Prologue/

So that's how Epiphany City started, almost 4 years ago. Thanks to all our players, we have tons of ideas on how to improve and evolve our designs, our puzzles, and our "dungeons" if we ever make another game. So with that, thank you to our players, thank you to Mark Brown, and thanks to yourself for reading this far. I'll see you in the comments of the next Boss Keys video =P

Sincerely, - Dave