After fighting through the elves, yeti, and snowmen in the mountains, the player then knows that he must fight through the factory to get closer to the nemesis, Santa Claus. This, of course brings back all sorts of terrible memories for our hero. This was the setting of his torment and suffering.
Again he would have to challenge his brethren who are still brainwashed, and don't realize the hero is fighting for their liberation. But he is in for a surprise when he sees that the inanimate toys that he used to build have been given life in order to stop him, in fact, hey are the first enemies he encounters in the second level.
Crawling through a tunnel in the first level mountain brings our hero to a pipe, through which he enters the factory.
From the earliest iteration of this level, we wanted this pipe to give the player a sense of claustrophobia, and with the colors, perhaps an epileptic seizure. I remember when I was a kid, I went to Universal Studios (back when there was only one, and it was in LA). The part of the tram tour that always had (and still has) the worst effect on me was the avalanche, when we drove through an enclosed tube, and he tube spun. This always made me sick, despite the fact that there wasn't any real movement. Since then I have always been fascinated with this sort of optical effects that challenge the orientation of the viewer. But I also realized that we're trying to make a commercial game, so there had to be a compromise, and so it ended up the way it is.
Another aspect of this pipe entrance to the level that Mike really wanted was that this entrance would reveal to the player the later places of he level. The only way to do this within a claustrophobic pipe would be to cut holes in the pipe. So the problem was that we needed to cut holes that the player could not pass through, but were big enough to get a good view of the factory portion of the level. The solution we came up with was bars.
Once the player passes through the drainage pipe, and sees the factory he will soon get to, we felt we had to put a buffer between these two portions of the level.
We decided on a simple hall way where all the excess presents from the toy factory were placed. Here the player finds the new toy villains he will face, including the teddy bear, the clapping monkey, and the rocking horse. He is also reminded of the elves who tried to kill him on the mountain.
This short L shaped hall offers the player a nice transition between the pipe and the toy factory.
From the earliest iteration of this level, we wanted this pipe to give the player a sense of claustrophobia, and with the colors, perhaps an epileptic seizure. I remember when I was a kid, I went to Universal Studios (back when there was only one, and it was in LA). The part of the tram tour that always had (and still has) the worst effect on me was the avalanche, when we drove through an enclosed tube, and he tube spun. This always made me sick, despite the fact that there wasn't any real movement. Since then I have always been fascinated with this sort of optical effects that challenge the orientation of the viewer. But I also realized that we're trying to make a commercial game, so there had to be a compromise, and so it ended up the way it is.
Another aspect of this pipe entrance to the level that Mike really wanted was that this entrance would reveal to the player the later places of he level. The only way to do this within a claustrophobic pipe would be to cut holes in the pipe. So the problem was that we needed to cut holes that the player could not pass through, but were big enough to get a good view of the factory portion of the level. The solution we came up with was bars.
Once the player passes through the drainage pipe, and sees the factory he will soon get to, we felt we had to put a buffer between these two portions of the level.
We decided on a simple hall way where all the excess presents from the toy factory were placed. Here the player finds the new toy villains he will face, including the teddy bear, the clapping monkey, and the rocking horse. He is also reminded of the elves who tried to kill him on the mountain.
This short L shaped hall offers the player a nice transition between the pipe and the toy factory.
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