Grouping Levels

It is customary for level-based games on mobile devices to have three levels to their level selection process: a main menu where players select "load a level", a chapter-select, and then a list of levels within that chapter.  This is a classic way to present lots of content in a clean, accessible format.

Within Sun Stones we change things up a bit - we don't put players on a menu screen at all.  In fact, most of our playtesters never enter any sort of  menu, because we just let them flow between "glyph walls" and individual puzzles.  We do have a menu system, and you can load individual levels through a more traditional 3-layer system, but our "no menu" alternative has been so strong that I sometimes wonder if we needed to bother.

What are Glyph Walls?

The metaphor behind playing Sun Stones is that you are using a cache of magical stones to create art on the rocky surface of a cave.  You close your eyes and receive a vision, which remains represented in abstract form when you open them again.  Using that abstract guide, you place stones on the surface.  Once the stones exactly match your vision, the stones disappear and the final artistic glyph is inscribed onto the surface.  That's one puzzle, or level of the game.

But these glyphs don't just exist in a vacuum - between individual puzzles you view a "Glyph Wall" which shows groups of glyphs - finished and unfinished.  These Glyph Walls generally have 8 glyphs or so, grouped by thematic elements and arranged to tell a story.  As players move through the game and solve their visions, they are simultaneously revealing the story each Glyph Wall tells.  For example, our second story is "The Hunt."  It begins with a campfire, arrowheads, and then a series of deer prints.  The prints lead to a deer, then an arrow in flight appears.  The final puzzle is the deer's hide drying over the fire which began the sequence.

Glyph Walls = Story = Mechanics

An exciting challenge for the team has been to not only select thematic glyphs for each wall, but to simultaneously teach new mechanics and new types of goals within each story.  In the hunt, you are learning to transmute orange sun stones into obsidian stones - a transformation which first happens with the fire and the arrowhead.  Later we use Weaving as a metaphor to teach players how rows of black stones are transmuted into white stones, and so forth.

It has been an ongoing challenge to simultaneously develop our mechanics, aesthetics, and level progression.  Various attempts by the team to separate these elements have resulted in some less-than-compelling experiences, so we've continued down this demanding path.  I hope players enjoy the efforts we've put into making those relationships so seamless.