After completing and releasing sphere core, I received such brilliant and positive feedback from people playing the game, that to not make a sequel would have been a real shame. I started thinking about the theme and ideas for the follow-up, trying to build on everything that people liked about the first game, and fix some of the issues that people found too confusing or too hard.
The first thing I needed to come up was the core concept of the game. In sphere core, the whole puzzle revolved around the white sphere machine, finding out how it worked, and using it to escape. For the sequel to Sphere Core, a Cube seemed the ideal and logical shape around which to base the name and the puzzles of the game.
I decided very early on that instead of the game just being about putting power cores into the cube and stabbing buttons on a remote randomly, you would actually go inside the cube and unlock it's mysteries from within. I liked the idea of a shrinking machine hidden behind an old fashioned wooden panel (and I really LOVE the animation for the panel opening in the game, it is very smooth and matches the audio perfectly), that allowed you to become small enough to enter a tiny opening in the base of the cube.
I was originally thinking about having the cube grow a robotic head/face like the sphere did in sphere core, but I couldn't really think of a good enough reason as to WHY the cube needed a face, and in the end I scrapped the idea.
I was thinking about puzzles which would be found in the rooms inside the cube, I knew I wanted something quite sciency and alien, a genetic laboratory which allowed you to create life forms was one of my first ideas. This then led to the creation of the mog-rat (retconned into sphere core as the frozen embryo), a puzzle involving rotating transparent tubes for it to run through, and a DNA analysing machine to print out the needed information for the other machines to work.
My idea for the final room was a simple combination lock room, that would be a self contained puzzle, eventually providing the final item needed to complete the game.
After settling on the main puzzle elements of the game, I worked on the essential details that linked everything together. I was originally working along the idea that the door in the room was a total red herring, that it was not involved in the escape at all, other than to serve as a distraction. I knew I wanted to do something a little different to the end of sphere core, I liked the idea of someone playing it to think to themselves “Oh yeah I know what happens now, the cube is gonna disappear and create the exit hole!”, and then after the cube animation completes to be thinking “Huh, is that it? I went though all that just for some rusty key!?”.
Instead of using the key in the door, I was going to have two pillars rise out of the floor, which when activated with the key would start to glow and create a whirling vortex portal which would be the exit. This idea got scrapped fairly early on, it would just have been too complicated to animate for me, I like to take pride in all my animations and unless I feel confident I can make it look good, I don't do it at all.
Also on this page are some little sketches I did for the other items found around the room. I liked the way the kitchen area in sphere core was so detached from the rest of the room, as if it had been ripped out of a house and transplanted into the room. I wanted something similar in cube core, and decided on a small area with a cosy chair and a lamp. I was really happy with how this turned out in game, and it provided a very useful part of the puzzle as a way to hide both a code and the power core.
This scan is a bit of a mess, but at the bottom you can see my overview for the escape puzzle. I find it useful to make these when making escape games, it allows me to plot out exactly what items are needed and when. I made a few changes to this in the final game (like the knife being obtained from the code room using the code on the chair), but overall it was my master blueprint for the whole game.
The sketch on the right was another idea for the exit, I was thinking of having pillars rise either side of the door which would “zap”it, causing the bricks to vanish and allowing you to exit. In the end I chose a much simpler and more elegant solution, using the key in the door causes the bricks to vanish, I liked the idea of making the light appear from behind the door as if the while room had moved upwards into the light, like on a giant elevator.
The final scan shows the development of some of the in-game screens. I wasn't sure how to portray the inside of the cube, I was thinking about having the rooms spread at 90 degrees to each other, but in practical terms this would have been a pain as it would require 4 views inside the central cube area (one for each doorway), which would be extra work both to draw, and for the player to navigate. I decided to try to push all the rooms together to make it easier to navigate to each room, I think it worked out very well.
The code room puzzle was pretty simple but I like how it turned out. It can be seen as a bit of a “time waster” in that it requires a lot of repetitive code entering and wheel turning, but to be honest I quite enjoy it, it builds up a sense of anticipation as to what will happen when you enter the final code.
The genetic lab was one of my favourite ideas, I really like how it turned out (I liked it so much I included it in the next game too!). The basic theory behind the machine was that it mixed the quantities of nucleotides (bits of DNA) together to automatically combine into the required lifeform. In real life the four nucleotides in DNA are Adenine, Thymine, Guanine and Cytosine (ATGC), I however simplified these down to three, combining the names of the nucleotides to make them sound unique and new, whilst still familiar.