Marbelous Development: The Catacombs Part 1

It was time to start building: I was happy with my movement and had quite a few level chunks to work with, so I started building one of three planned areas: The Catacombs.

They're planned to be exactly as we know them: cramped, mysterious, and maze-like. These characteristics were considered heavily in my design.

The Catacombs are not the player's first experience with the game. However, since the game is planned to be open-world, it's possible the player has not yet been exposed to certain concepts, like breaking wooden walls. So, I wanted to have a dramatic entrance that illustrates this (note that I have not yet built the lighting):

Here's an applied and tweaked version of the chunk you might have seen in the previous post. Here, the player is forced to learn about wall jumping if they haven't already (this will be useful if I release The Catacombs as a standalone demo). If they don't wall jump correctly, then they'll learn about the water (which pushes them back). I have plans for players to be able to use the water to their advantage in other areas.

Here's an overhead view of the "turbine" section you might have also seen in my last post. The player enters through the duct at the top, and must navigate counter-clockwise until they can get to the duct on the right.