Creating Ghosts
One of Ghost Mission’s key mechanics is, aptly titled, “GHOST” mode (or G.H.O.S.T. as it’s presented in the game’s story). Upon pressing and holding the SHIFT key, the player becomes temporarily invisible to enemies and is able to move around levels unseen. Like any ghost though, the invisibility doesn’t guarantee a total lack of detection. Firing unsilenced weapons or physically making contact with most enemies will trigger their alert status and break the illusion. In addition, having GHOST mode active will drain from the player’s synonymous GHOST meter in-game. When the meter runs out, no more ghosting. It is possible to refill the meter in most levels with adrenaline pickups and the meter refills automatically at the start of each new mission segment, but managing GHOST use as a resource is important to surviving the perils ahead.
Funnily enough, GHOST mode didn’t exist until March of 2023. The GHOST meter used to be a more generic sprint meter, and pressing shift gave the player the ability to move more quickly through levels. The upside was that it allowed the player to maneuver through certain level segments without risk of being seen by enemies on a path. It also let players more easily dodge enemy projectiles when being attacked. The meter itself would refill on a cooldown timer, allowing the player to treat it as a resource without permanently losing it. My initial thought process for including a sprint function was that movement in stealth games, especially those which inspired Ghost Mission, often felt slow. Obviously the point of the genre is to not be seen and part of the fun comes from the tension play between having limited resources (ammo, movement speed, etc) and making use of them if/when caught, but I always wished I had the ability to quickly move out of trouble if it came. Conversely, I didn’t want players to just blitz through levels like Sonic, so a quick-drain but cool-down affected sprint meter was added.
Unfortunately, the sprint meter was just kind of…incongruous. Part of what makes solo development difficult is that, in doing every step of production and development yourself, it’s easy to get too laser focused on small details, fall into the weeds, and lose perspective on the project at large. What made sense in my head didn’t add up during pre-alpha build playtests. Feedback was almost universally along the lines of “Hey, it’s fun to zip around, but…why? It makes dodging attacks a little too easy and then ability refresh takes too long. The whole thing kind of stands out as useless and out of place.” My first reaction was to decrease cooldown time for sprinting, but that only partially addressed the issue.
Then it hit me. This is a stealth game. It’s called “GHOST MISSION” and its gameplay, themes, characters, and storyline all involve not being seen…so why the hell can’t you as the player become a ghost?
It’s so glaringly obvious now that I can’t believe I didn’t think of it in the last three years, but all of the weird incongruities from sprinting evaporated. Now there is a function that supports both theme and interactive form and the game itself is much better for it.
…and in the end, GHOST mode does include a very slight movement speed increase.
Until next time,
-Kevin
Burn Below
