Hollow Knight, Disco Elysium, and Creating Engaging Exploration

 I recently finished my first playthrough of Disco Elysium (striking while the iron is hot). At the risk of sounding too original: what a game. Disco is really really phenomenal about creating a world that feels like a real, living tapestry of history in just a couple of unique locations. Every location you visit is awash with little details, characters spanning the game's unique sense of comedy and tragedy, and history. Like, real, tangible history. 

Disco very easily earned its place in my top games of all time, joining the likes of Hollow Knight and Dishonored in the ‘I will happily replay this again and again’ stage. Each of these games has something in common that they each approach very differently: a world that is fun to explore. 

When designing Inkwarren's procedures for exploring the world of Cairnadal, I want to evoke some of the same emotions that these games give me with their mechanics. But I am not a team of video game level designers, and neither will the Voice in the Dark be for any Inkwarren game down the line.

What makes the exploration in these games work? How do we translate it to a game?

Before I break it down, let's break our terms for game design into three categories:

• Rules. The text of the game. Emotions or feelings that we can evoke through text and mechanic. 
• Procedures. Soft advice for how to run the game. Malleable. Guides for creating the theatre of the game world that can be modified or tweaked per table. 
• Maxims. General ideas. Things to remember. Not a codified rule, but a goal to be ascribed to. 

Spoilers for both games ahead, but I'll try to keep them light.

Hollow Knight: Hints & Mortality

Hollow Knight is, and has been for years, my favorite game of all time. I have played through the game 3 or 4 times, and its sequel Silksong twice. It's really special. 

Hollow Knight thrusts you into the bug-sized world of Hallownest through the eyes of its nameless player character-- most community sources call them the Knight. The Knight is small, cute, and voiceless-- a blank tapestry perfect for projecting the player's consciousness onto them. 

I think the exploration of Hollow Knight feels like it does because of two maxims: it never answers questions where a hint will suffice, and never goes easy on you as a player. 

Hints

Hollow Knight never answers a question where a hint will do. Throughout the game, you will find ruined statues, inscriptions with cryptic meanings, and many, many carcasses of dead bugs that hint at some sort of past catastrophe that turned Hallownest on its head. As you follow the road across the first several areas of the game, this sense of melancholic finality culminates in the beautiful City of Tears-- a vast, large area where it constantly rains and you get to see the zombified soldiers of Hallownest performing their rote responsibilities for eternity. 

Hollow Knight manages to be melancholic through much of its gameplay, only transforming to tragedy once you put together enough of the tapestry to understand what really happened to Hallownest. Everywhere else, the sadness of the setting is tinged with your own lack of understanding of what happened. For most of the game, you don't get to know all of the details: the surroundings impress upon you that you are traveling through the ruins of a once-great civilization, and now they're gone. That's all you get to know.

Mortality

The Knight is among the weakest things in Hallownest. At the start of your game, you'll find vengeflies that lazily buzz towards you or husks that run to you in a predictable fashion, practically begging you to test out your Nail on them. Eventually, you will run into an enemy that kicks your ass. It might be a mini-boss, like the early game Gruzz Mother, or a boss like the False Knight. Later on into the game, even standard wandering enemies will be enough to make you halt and travel cautiously. 

Because the game is so difficult, exploring becomes a ration of caution and effect. You are encouraged to explore carefully-- around every corner could be a new enemy or a new area that forces you to react, not act, and learn how to bypass them. At the same time, you are encouraged to push forward-- at a certain point in the game, any path could be the path you need to move forward. If they don't progress the story, unexplored paths could offer shortcuts, benches (places to rest and regain health), or rewards that will make exploring easier down the line.

You are encouraged to be daring, but encouraged to be cautious as well. This encouragement comes with the simple fact that you are weak, and your enemies are strong. It works well.

What do we learn from Hollow Knight? 

Let's take a rule, a procedure, and a maxim from the game.

  
Rule: Searching. Inkwarren's core 'challenge draw' mechanic does not cover any action relating to establishing knowledge. If you want to know something, you have to ask your Voice: whether that would be searching a dark room, telling if someone is lying, or establishing what your woodlander might know about a subject. The Voice assigns a level to the answer you seek (common, obscure, or arcane), and then looks at your character's relevant Knacks (skills). 

Depending on what your character knows and is good at, you'll get one of three replies: a truthful answer, a hint in the right direction, or no answer at all. Each provides you with information you can use to move forward. However, first: you have to ask the question. 

Procedure: Skirmishes & Battles. Inkwarren's Battle system is something I'm very proud of, but it's not made to be pulled out for every conflict woodlanders might face. Battles are for pitched, dramatic confrontations-- like a boss fight. If the woodlanders are fighting someone who might not match them in skill, drama, or simply time, they 'skirmish', using a simple procedure of challenge draws and hits to resolve the fight. This ensures that when the battle map is pulled out, it's an event. It's something to lock in for. Every fight is made to be challenging. Woodlanders must choose carefully when and where they wish to draw their blades. 

Maxim: Questions. Never answer a question that hasn't been asked, and never tell the players something their characters can't observe. That's my advice for the Voice. Make your woodlanders think about how they will explore an area, or what they will do to find the answers they seek.

As an aside, we had a situation in my last session of Inkwarren where a player became suspicious of an NPC that had been traveling with them. The NPC, called Ffreuer Fawn, had appeared out of nowhere several nights before and asked to travel with the party. He offered a trade: help him find a missing hunter, and he would help them cross the River Wide safely to their goal. The party agreed.

The moment of suspicion came in the lair of a great recluse spider, after a particularly hard battle. The player asked me, from the perspective of his character, Nim. 

"Is Ffreur lying to us?"

I told him, 'I can't answer if he's lying or not. I can tell you that you notice the skull he is holding is decayed beyond recognition, and it would be impossible to corroborate his tale either way.'

The player decided Ffreur was lying, and convinced about half of the party about this. The next day, they told Ffreuer that they wished to part ways. It was a divisive decision-- some of the party trusted Ffreur, some did not. They had a meaningful choice towards how to proceed because of that maxim: I couldn't tell them what Ffreur was thinking. I could tell them what they saw, and let them decide from there. 

Many of my players read this blog, so I can't say the real deal with Ffreur (yet). It was a great moment all the same.

Disco Elysium: People & Factions

Disco Elysium is a very different game from Hollow Knight. There are no boss battles. You're very rarely in danger while playing. It's a game about people, politics, and the main character: Superstar Cop Harrier du Bois. 

Disco breaks several rules that I listed as to why Hollow Knight works so well. It answers questions frequently (although always couched in bias from whoever is answering). It gives you a real character to play in Harrier, rather than a blank slate (although with his amnesia, it's arguable that you are a blank slate in the ways that count). Harrier is not always the weakest one in the room-- he's a cop, with authority. It doesn't matter if he's a pathetic cop. He's got things like jurisdiction and a badge (at one point) to wave around. 

So, what makes Disco compelling, if it's nothing like Hollow Knight? 

Disco is a game that loves people, and a game that loves choice. It gives you plenty of each. 

People

Disco has some of the best character work I've seen in a game, ever. Every character has their own quirks, flaws, goals, and beliefs, which makes navigating the game incredibly, incredibly rewarding. One of the first characters you meet is Cuno, a tweenaged boy who is busy in the back yard pelting the corpse you're investigating with rocks. He speaks in the third person, constantly barrages you with insults and homophobic jeers and taunts, backed up by his more reclusive sidekick Cunoesse. If you ask Cuno if he knew the man who died, Cuno replies: "Yeah! He's Cuno's fuck-gimp!" Class act. 

You hate Cuno, yeah? Don't like him? Bet you didn't know he craves approval from his distant and abusive father. Bet you didn't know that Cunoesse is an orphan he found and took into his home. You dislike him now? Oh, you do? That's fair. He's a lot.

Cuno has interiority, which is what makes him and so many other characters in the game so compelling. They have lives and goals and aspirations totally separate from Harrier, and by treating them like people you, as Harrier, can get some insights into what they're individually going through. Many characters made a deep impression on me: Klaasje, the illustrious woman at the center of the murder case who seems like she's always hiding another secret about what happened, Titus Hardie and the Hardie Boys, the rough, rude union guys just trying to protect their own from harm. Even the nihilistic, disillusioned Deserter is a deeply tragic character in a horribly uncomfortable way. 

Factions

Disco, at several points during your playthrough, will ask you to pick the lesser of two evils (from your perspective). One such choice comes early on: will you side with the Union, led by the obviously corrupt Evrart Claire, or with Wild Pines, the large corporate conglomerate faced by the pristine and kind Joyce Messier? 

It's not a clear cut decision, and Disco knows its player base is predisposed towards siding with the worker-forward Union. Evrart Claire oozes corruption. He never gives you anything unless he can get something out of it. He wants to redevelop and gentrify the nearby, impoverished fishing village. His head muscle is an avowed race supremacist named Measurehead. 

By contrast, Joyce Messier is the representative of the expansive Wild Pines company. She is kind to you, and intelligent, and understanding. It's easy to trust her and count her as a friend as she explains the world and fills in gaps in your memory. Then-- you mention the strike, or the scabs, and the veil slips a little bit. She speaks about the strikers with a vitriol she hasn't reserved for anyone else you've discussed. 

With this initial choice, you must choose between the existing order or radical, painful change. If the Union loses and Wild Pines takes control of Martinaise once more, things return to how they were-- a poor, crumbling district with jobs that pay just well enough from a company that, far away from here is using hired mercenaries to brutalize people that you don't know. Or the Union wins-- and the stronger Wild Pines will be sure to bring its full force down upon Martinaise and lead to a long, arduous struggle for change. Neither choice is bloodless. You have to choose what you want. 

You have the option to not pick a side. You can skirt both ways and try not to offend everyone. However, the conflict will happen anyways and resolve anyways-- and no one will remember you as a friend. 

What do we learn from Disco Elysium? 

Like we did with Hollow Knight, let's take a rule, procedure, and a maxim from the game. 

Rule: Emphasizing Relationships. This is sort of a negative rule-- where the gap in the system represents the rule itself. Woodlanders never have any abilities that give them access to great stores of wealth or armies to command. They are limited to a mere five Coins in their Coinpurse, so they can't hold great riches on their person. If they want to buy the world or gather an army or send spies into a local town, they must build relationships that allow them to do this. If you choose to create a Houseborne (noble) woodlander, you start with a relationship like this-- but you could easily lose it if you act against the expectations laid out for you by your house.

Navigating the world without relationships must be hard. We accomplish this by deliberately creating gaps that only relationships can fill on the character sheet.

Procedure: Creating Voice Characters. When the Voice creates Voice characters, they follow a simple template of five steps. Each step adds more detail than the last-- if you want to dip into a shallower character, you simply need to stop at an earlier step. These steps are:

1. Draw the Outline. Write down the characters name, a short description, and two key details about them. (Lutig Harchild, cat knight, arrogant & pompous)
2. Add Goal. Add a goal for the character. (Wants to inherit House Harchild)
3. Add Strengths & Weaknesses. Add several strengths and weaknesses for the woodlanders to contend with. Two of each is plenty for most characters. (Master duelist, politically savvy, but self-centered and reckless). 
4. Add Secrets. Give the character 3 secrets for the woodlanders to discover. 
• Lutig didn't always want to be a knight, but was pushed into it by his father.
• Lutig never got to speak to his father before he died. 
• Lutig envies his sister, Loveday, who devoted her life to the study of medicine and humors.

With this template, you as the Voice will be able to prepare characters quickly that give the impression of depth and internality to your players.

Maxim: Everyone Wants Something. I think it was Heart: The City Beneath that gave some GM advice that has stuck with me: if it's valuable, someone guards it. If no one guards it, it's hard to get to. If no one guards it and it's easy to get to, it's not valuable. Make the woodlanders consider how they must acquire the things they want. No one will help them for free. Everyone wants something, and promises aren't enough, especially if the woodlanders are asking someone to risk their life. 

In Summary

The game is what the game cares about. If we want exploring the world to be fun and engaging, we must look at other examples of worlds that are fun and engaging to explore and see what makes them work. I love exploring a room-- I like asking questions and receiving answers and making my choices based on those. Obviously, not every player will. 

I tell my playtesters frequently in regards to feedback about the game-- I'm not concerned with making the ur-game that is fun for everyone that comes to the table. If a player doesn't enjoy exploring a world and scene in the way the mechanics can't represent, I can't really fix that.

What I can fix-- and what I am concerned with for feedback, is if the game accomplishes what it sets out to do. I want Inkwarren to be a game where exploration, relationships, and choices are important and integral for everyday play. I want players to use their wits when exploring the world, and ally with people they wouldn't normally ally with to accomplish their goals. I want every Voice character to feel like a real, developed person with their own secrets and goals. 

Anyways, play games! Have a great September!