5.6.- The Pit
This is the main puzzle I would say, not only as the metaphor of the two worlds I talked about before but also as a puzzle that needs interaction with other locations and items to be solved.
People trying to cross it in a usual way like jumping, will die, no matter if they try to run first, or if they decide to go down carefully, and no support will be given from the castle inhabitants if you ask for it.
This is a physical puzzle, as it involves some “spatial” thinking: If you can’t arrive to the other side jumping from the same level, perhaps you can do it jumping from a higher point. To do this, you need that higher point, and the tree is the most obvious solution, but if you try to take the tree, as we saw before, you die.
How can I get a tree? Well trees come from apples, so the logic here is I would say “real logic”, being the “cartoonish crazy logic” only in that a tree needs time to grow. But as long as you try to plant the apple you will see you can do something with it.
It is also possible that the player was not going to understand the concept of gaining height to try the jump, and he just ends up with a tree there after trying the most common things you can make with an apple: eat, give to someone, throw, stab, or finally, plant it.
Following the “cartoonish crazy logic”, it was perfectly possible to get a tree immediately after the apple is planted, but I wanted to make the puzzle a little longer, and the small plant that appeared needed to be watered. After all, all this game goes about growing. Where can the player get water? The easy way was using one of the little things in the “lore” of the game: a drawing of you at the toilets.
I wanted to use that resource somewhere in the game, and I couldn’t think of a better place than that, so this part of the puzzle came without too much thinking. But once it was here, it came to my mind again the metaphorical reason for the pit, separating the childhood world from the adult one, and it made me think about the fact that to cross that line it was necessary for Gent Stickman to use some hidden parts of his body. Please, is there a doctor (of psychiatry) in the room?
The transcripts showed me that there are some very creative players, trying to do some “rain dance” for watering. Good for you!
Once you get the new tree, climbing to it and saying “Jump to the castle” was something pretty easy to do. And after all that work, and with its high level of meaning, the moment was an important one, and required special attention to the “animations”.
When one of the beta testers arrived at that point the first time, the game was not fully finished, and that jump was working but without any “story” message yet. That beta tester very wisely noticed that this was an important moment that needed it, and told me to do it.
I thought that the best option was to bring some suffering to the player, making him believe for a moment that the jump would be unsuccessful. As far as I know from players talking about this, the trick makes its magic as they remember this as a special moment in the game.
In fact, one of the players I saw playing the game in front of me in real life, told me after the “Nadia Comăneci” moment jumping the pit from the tree, when it seems you will die again but finally Gent Stickman makes a very professional twist on air and is finally acclaimed, that this was one of the best moments of his life.
Just after that, he knocked on the castle door and was killed by an anvil thrown on his head, and told me that this was also the worst moment of his life. I really, really hope none of this be true, and is just hyperbole : D
Cartoon language was very well understood by the players in that gymnastic jump moment, where some cartoon people appear in the last vignette to evaluate the jump and give the perfect score, as after that no player tried to search for these people with commands, understanding perfectly that they were not part of the game, but only a stylistic resource to make the story more epic and funny.