Skylanders: Shrink Squad

Ch. 2 Reflection

This chapter serves as a creators reflection on the second chapter of Skylanders Shrink Squad, Ancient Woods. There will be two reflections on this chapter, the first being my own on the creation of the story and level design. This includes the reasoning for everything and just the general idea behind the level.

The second will be done by the AMAZING Gaming Scientist who has created the playable versions of these levels, something that will never cease to amaze me.

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ANCIENT WOODS
Starting out with the actual level, the origins for this chapter aren't anything particularly special. I've noticed that a lot of second chapters in the previous Skylands games seemed to be a sort of filler level. A secondary introduction level to make sure the player is becoming accustomed to the gameplay. And so I sought to do the same thing.

The original plan had this being "Lava Land" — a lava themed amusement park that Eruptor asks you to help save from the mist. This idea was scrapped and changed to an adventure pack. Then came the idea for it to be a fairy themed level. Persephone would ask for your help and the Skylander would dutifully oblige. And so came the plan for Fantasm Fairy Forest.

Now I know what you're thinking: great alliteration! And yeah, I know. It is great alliteration — something many Skylander level names have in case you hadn't noticed.

But in all seriousness, this obviously isn't Ancient Woods. The title change came around after I did some research on Persephone where I found out that her home already had a name (I bet you'll never guess it). Yes, Ancient Woods.

And I will admit that I don't necessarily love this title, but I figure it's better to stay accurate to Skylander lore than retconning things I don't like.

And so, the title was decided and the level was designed. As far as atmosphere goes, I really wanted a Mushroom River vibe for the level, only more foresty than jungly. I pictured a giant forest with great trees that blocked out the sun, making it seem like it always night. But the leaves and fairies used these glowing bioluminescent lights to combat the darkness. But I didn't want it just to be a part of the atmosphere, I wanted to incorporate it into the actual gameplay. That's where the fairy lights came in.

The idea was to have the player find the correctly colored lights to reveal secret bridges from tree to tree while also revealing hidden collectibles. This would hopefully increase the replay-ability of the level.

This is reflected in the fact that there are two separate paths that you can take. This was done as a way to prepare myself for creating more open-world type levels in the future — Trolltopia in particular.

Both of these paths converge where we meet Mistephone for the first time. This was added late in the writing process. I realized that meeting the villain at the end of the level doesn't really build up the stakes. And I'm glad I did. As it stands, Mistephone remains my second favorite character to write for the Shrink Squad story (the King of Chaos is the number one by the way).

Persephone is such a bubbly character that has a very unique way of speaking. And so keeping that same voice while changing her dialogue to something sinister was such a fun thing to do.

In the games, Persephone always greeted you with how happy she was to see you. So I changed that to, "Ugh! So angry to see you, Skylander."

The best part was coming up with the sinister threats she would throw at you. "The great trees shall sing no longer, Skylander, and neither shall you!" This is one of my favorite lines to picture her saying.