24 Killers (2023, PC): Footprints in the Sand

By Todd Luke

Follow the developer: (Twitter)

24 Killers is an adventure game where you rescue and help monsters on a tiny island as a larger plot about the multiverse unfolds. The small cast and setting allowed me to forgo things like quest logs and objective markers. Players are expected to make connections between characters, events, dialogue, and landmarks in their minds. Helping players make those connections has been a fun challenge throughout the game’s development, and important for engaging people with 24K’s microcosm in an organic way.

Footprints in the Sand

My aunt had a picture on her wall of a trail of footprints on a beach. It had a short story overlaid on the scene. A person had a dream they were walking on the beach with the Lord. Different events from their life appeared in the sky, and there were only one set of footprints during the hard times. This troubled them until they learned that the Lord was carrying them during those times. This is good game design. I want players to look back on their playthrough of 24K and see only one set of footprints.

Context Clues

On the surface, 24K has very little guidance. The game gives players direction in the form of what I broadly call “context clues”. These can be visual cues, hints in dialogue, something in the environment that really sticks out, cutscenes, item descriptions, etc.. After receiving feedback from beta testers, I spent a lot of time refining these clues, making them as silent and impactful as possible in order to help players along. I’ll give a couple examples.

Soil Mounds

There are four mounds around the island where you can plant seeds. You’re required to plant a particular seed, in a particular order, in each of the mounds to progress the story. This was hard to communicate, and it was confusing to players when they tried planting a seed at the wrong soil mound. To fix this, I made the soil mounds appear one at a time and tied their appearing in with the story more. When a seed is matured at a soil mound, the next mound appears. Players were instantly drawn to the correct soil mound with a seed without me needing to really communicate anything else.

Mobile of Stars

Another example is coming in a future update this Summer! The game has been out for over a year now, and I was planning to add some kind of guidance/objective marker toggle to help players if they get stuck. After thinking of how to implement this and what it would look like, I thought it would be better to come up with something more in line with the ethos of 24K. After certain triggers, events will happen when the player sleeps. Sometimes these are required to progress. This was inspired by Little King’s Story (Wii, 2009). I noticed some players would sleep over and over if they got stuck, hoping something would occur at night. To solve this, I thought it would be cool to have a mobile above the player’s bed, and add a star to the mobile for each event that would play out at night. If there are stars, the player knows that something will happen when they sleep. If there are no stars, the player knows that there is something that needs to be done out in the world in order to progress.

My Bounty

My game design bounty is to take 24K’s game loop and use it in a fully 3D adventure game with an art style similar to Opoona (2007, Wii).

Consider taking the Volume 1 reader survey!