5.4.- The Death
“The Death” is a way to limit the world’s movement in that direction, but many other things could have done the same job, like a wall. I had two main reasons for thinking about death here. The first one is to help the player to understand that whatever he tries here, he will die. The second one, is that it will be useful at the end of the game. It is in fact the real “Chekhov’s gun” of the game: “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.”
So, this was the limit-the-world solution that allowed me to create the final puzzle, in the “Evil Meat Hand fighting” location where the game can be only won by “that one” that wins everything.
After releasing the game, some people complained that if the Death was going to be invocable at the end of the game, it should also give some response when invoked from other locations, for example when called from the tree location to chop the tree with its scythe.
This would be a dangerous approach from my point of view. The death can’t be used to help in another task, or it will lose its power as “Chekhov’s gun” (once fired, there’s no need to fire it again). Perhaps the game would allow the player to invoke it and show its destructive power in each location, but it also has the risk of making the player think that the role of Death in the game is finished, so this will be carefully thought about but probably will not be included in the definitive edition of the game.
The change I will probably do in this screen is related to a comment from one of my beta testers:
Having been proven by beta testers that the final one is a difficult puzzle to solve, it would be a good idea to give some more clues to solve it. Not too much, as I want the game to stay somewhat difficult.
The change will be in the image sequence shown when you try something different to go to the death location. At this moment, Gent Stickman looks at it, then it looks at him, and then Gent Stickman dies.
The change will be subtle: Gent stickman will look the death, it will look Gent stickman, then death will point him with its HAND in some kind of invitation for a handshake. Gent Stickman will smile and handshake death, and then he will die.
This will relate in some vague way that the way to combat Evil Meat Hand is by shaking hands with Death, and will be a way to show that in fact the death is not so evil but only, well, deadly.