Maquette soundtrack Ps4#

Once we had the story in place, I realised we just needed enough puzzles to tell the story correctly, and give the player the kind of puzzles that would match the emotional arc of the story.' And when I came across the romance, I realised that it was the exact kind of left turn that I needed to make this work. So I went back to the drawing board and started just writing stories, not specifically for Maquette, but to remind myself of why I like telling them, and what I like about them. 'But after a couple of years developing it, I realised I didn't really care about telling that story. 'Originally, I'd written a fairy tale with a character trapped in a recursive dungeon by an evil wizard,' says Lemoore. A wistful romance might not immediately make sense for a puzzle game anchored around geometry and logic, but Lemoore tells me that Maquette's narrative has been a crucial north star in guiding the pace and structure of the game's experience. 'We all know how unpredictable video game physics can be' Hanford LemooreĪs challenging as its puzzles can be, Maquette is an inherently lovely experience, its neo-Victorian architecture and Bay Area indie soundtrack all working to evoke the enchanting ambience of San Francisco, where Michael and Kenzie's love affair takes place.

The rule is try to guide players in a certain direction, but definitely don't keep them from having their fun if they want to play in a certain way.' The shape of love But at some point, you realise if the player has an 'a-ha!' moment that we didn't expect them to have, we're not really going to be able to stop that.

'Originally, I was trying to make an ironclad puzzle design where people could only solve things in one way. So any solution that the player comes up with, I'm always interested to see.' And we all know how unpredictable physics and video games can be. 'We try to set puzzles up with an intended solution, and we gently telegraph that solution to the player,' he explains. When I tell Lemoore about this, he laughs, revealing that 'the ticket workaround is a common one'. It wasn't until some time later that I realised I could have instead shrunk the object to fit in a ticket box that would open up a completely different area of the map. In one instance, I found a ticket the size of a beach ball, and spent several minutes trying to correctly place it in the smaller world in such a manner that it would act as a giant ramp to take me over a barred fence. The coolest part is that Maquette's simulation of this effect opens the door to creative problem solving that perhaps Graceful Decay hadn't even considered. Take a key you've used to open a door, place it in the smaller version model of the world, and suddenly you've got yourself a giant, moveable bridge with which to navigate gaps to new areas. Lemoore isn't over exaggerating about the potential of these mind-bending logic puzzles. It was up to me to unearth those things and create interesting scenarios that challenge you.' So the game kind of designs itself in that regard. Right away, I just saw all the potential for it there were just lots and lots of really interesting things. Maquette's mechanic was just rich with that. And whenever I had one of those moments, I was like 'Well, there's another puzzle!'.

You start moving things and taking things between levels of recursion and whatnot, and you start to see interesting behaviours and think 'Oh, that's unexpected'.

'Really early on in my design, the recursive mechanic started to show all sorts of interesting things right away. There were several times where Bryce pointed out correctly that a certain line didn't feel right for the scene, and so we would workshop it there and rewrite it.' Bryce and Seth would read through a scene, we'd talk about it with each other, and oftentimes they would rework the scene right there. 'They recorded in their house in New York, and I was here directing remotely in Nevada, and my sound engineer was controlling the computer we had set up from Oakland. For creative director Hanford Lemoore, watching his dialogue come to life through the voices of two stars of the small and big screen was an experience, to say the least. Developer Graceful Decay's debut project, a puzzle game centred around the concept of recursion, follows a modern love story set in San Francisco, with its two leads played by real life power couple Bryce Dallas Howard and Seth Gabel.

Maquette soundtrack Ps4#

For a more imminent example, take Maquette, arriving free to PS Plus this week for PS5 owners (the game is also available on PS4 and PC).