Secrets have been a crucial part of video
game design since… basically the the start
of video games, the first ever gaming Easter
egg and the coiner of the term was found in
the Atari game Adventure, and involved picking
up this green square, taking it to a specific
spot and then activating it to see the name
of the lead dev.
In the Batman Arkham games, the developers
over at rocksteady always left sneaky clues
as to the next game in the trilogy - a secret
room behind a destructible wall in Quincy
Sharp’s office hints at the release of Arkham
City - and playing that game whilst your console
or PC’s internal date is set to December
13th 2004 - the day Rocksteady was founded,
gives you a spooky hint about the yet-to-be-released
Arkham Knight’s story from D-list villain
calendar man.
And more recently, in Apex legends, finding
and shooting all of these adorable nessie
plushies scattered around the king’s canyon
map will summon a giant life-sized one from
the ocean - which more than makes up for the
fact that you almost certainly lost the game
trying to do this.
Needless to say, searching for Easter eggs
and hidden secrets within games is great fun,
but this game design trend is more than a
source of cool trivia and stealthy marketing
- the fun of hunting for hidden things is
a crucial component to the appeal of some
beloved genres, and has a bunch of wider applications
in game design as a whole. Metroidvanias wouldn’t
work at all without a world full of goodies
to sniff out, platformers use secrets to push
players into mastering each level and even
battle royales like fortnite use a constantly
changing selection of secret fun things to
keep you playing and discussing the game.
But, before we get started, we should probably
agree on what a secret actually is - and by
that I mean I’m going to tell you what I
think one is. An easy, broad definition for
a video game secret is a thing that’s in
a game, that’s hidden, obscured, or requires
some sort of extra effort beyond what’s
normally required to beat the game to access.
These coins or this fire flower in Mario?
Not a secret. This hidden room filled with
coins or this one up you’ve got to do some
tricky platforming to grab, they are secrets
- get the difference? Cool.
But that begs the question, what makes a good
secret? Because it’s very easy for a developer
to hide a secret thing in a completely random,
totally obscure place and make it impossible
to find, but that doesn’t exactly make it
fun or enrich the gameplay experience, does
it?
I think, contrary to common sense, the most
important thing about secrets is that they’re,
meant to be found - and the real value of
adding them to a game is in players seeking
them out, not necessarily the find itself.
You might think that’s a typically architect
of games wishy-washy answer, but let me explain
myself. That impulse to scour a game for something
you’ve been told you’re not supposed to
find, but actually are, can be used in a variety
of important ways, and not just for expert
players, secrets can be used to help newbies
start their journey as well as give experts
something to do once they’ve mastered everything
else.
Take the litany of upgrades you find lying
around in Metroidvania games for example,
stuff like the hidden upgrade gears in Steamworld
Dig 2 or the mask shards in hollow knight
- a lot of these goodies are really quite
easy to spot, you just can’t get them right
away. This means that they end up sticking
in your mind and you can come back to pick
them up once you’ve got the right upgrade.
This little gameplay loop of finding a secret
and then coming back to it once you can actually
acquire the damn thing is an incredibly useful
tool in the game designer’s arsenal, because
it encourages players to build up a mental
map of the area they’re supposed to be exploring
and re-exploring.
This cool halfpipe in the opening areas of
Metroid Prime isn’t just a striking bit
of level geometry, it also hides a missile
upgrade that observant players will spot,
but won’t be able to get. This initial frustration,
plus the fun of going back to the chozo ruins
and grabbing it once you’ve got the boost
ball cements the place in your memory, and
acts as a clever teaching moment to remind
players to be aware of halfpipe shaped structures
elsewhere in the world, because they probably
hide goodies as well.
We tend to think of secrets exclusively in
terms of the big, fun Easter eggs that make
for great top ten lists, but smaller, easier
ones are a great way to guide players, and
subtly teach them how you want them to play.
Uncovering lambda caches in Half life 2, secret
rooms in DOOM or tucked away and often glitchy
ammo caches in Halo aren’t particularly
challenging, but encourage players to keep
their eyes open and explore off the beaten
path. I like to call these kinds of secrets
guidance secrets, because whilst they are
hidden, they’re actually pretty easy to
find and are mostly used to tech players.
Most people are savvy enough to tune out obvious
tutorial messaging, but the thrill of finding
something hidden, something surprising, can
communicate a lesson and offer an incentive
to find more very effectively.
In VVVVVV the player is introduced to shiny
trinkets, the game’s optional collectables,
in the room, trench warfare - BUT, if you’re
good at exploring, or are just bad at the
game like I am, you can actually find a trinket
a bit earlier in the room it’s a secret
to nobody, accessible by missing the jump
in the Atmospheric Filtering Unit. This little
secret area not only gives players a hands-on
exploration experience, but it also tells
them that falling off the bottom of the screen
isn’t lethal like in most other platformers.
Of course, there’s a clue in the name “it’s
a secret to nobody” beyond the Zelda reference,
most players are going to find that trinket
before the tutorial - but doing so gives them
an awesome feeling like they’ve got one
up on the game, and chasing that feeling will
drive them to hunt down the other eighteen
trinkets.
Using secret hunting to guide players towards
getting better at the game works for newbies,
but if you just handed out freebies forever,
then you wouldn’t be making the most of
your secrets. Another important way of approaching
secrets, is to consider that they can also
be a great way to help players modulate their
game's difficulty. In platformers, new players
can learn from guidance secrets to figure
out what’s going on, but they’re free
to simply ignore stuff like secret exits or
optional pickups by running through the path
of least resistance. More advanced players,
on the other hand, can test their observational
and platforming skills by going after them,
and deal with a difficulty spike tailored
exclusively for their skill level.
The hidden quest for the Lord of The Mountain
in the legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild
is a fantastic opportunity for experienced
players to test their knowledge and understanding
of the world. New players will dismiss this
glowy green light as just another weird part
of a world they don’t understand and can
have fun with the more obvious content until
they’re ready. But experienced adventurers
who’ve mapped out Hyrule, and understand
how the various systems interlock will be
able to track the source of the light down
to Satori Mountain (named after Mr Iwata,
rip) make the trek up to the Lord’s lair
during the dangerous night-time and will have
the experience required to tame him. As a
reward for finding the secret they get a cool
looking mount with infinite stamina - a perfect
companion for journeying to the farthest corners
of the world to hoover up those last few shrines.
Secrets also reward repeat playthroughs - In
Noita, the spell-slinging powder-flinging
rougelike, new players will either completely
miss or get scared off by this massive lava
lake, but advanced players will know how to
cross it, and will be rewarded by a special
secret upgrade as well as a superfast shortcut
down to a later level. By having secrets represent
optional challenges, designers can allow players
to customise their experience *and* create
multiple possible levels upon which the game
can be enjoyed.
New players, or those just looking for an
easy playthrough, aren’t going to be interested
in super-hard optional challenges, and it
would probably spoil their experience if they
ran into ultra-hard stuff before they were
ready. Therefore, it’s important to hide
or gate secrets which contain a test of mastery
such that only players up to the challenge
need apply. In Dark Souls 2, most of the hardest
bosses are optional secret fights, and can
be found within hidden areas or as the “reward”
for completing long, esoteric quest lines
like in the case of Aldia or the Darklurker.
Only players actively looking for a challenge
are going to bother with getting to these
areas, and they’ll hopefully relish the
challenge these secret areas have to offer.
Unless it’s the unicorns of doom in which
case they can go to hell.
Players looking to test their mastery still
need a bit of re-enforcement to encourage
them to delve into the deepest layers of the
game. Many games reward the completion or
collection of secrets with new content that
has a higher skill-ceiling, or requires advanced
mechanical know-how. Bayonetta 2’s Takemikazuchi
- err, big hammer, sorry about the terrible
pronunciation, requires doing a fair bit of
exploring and optional fights to get your
hands on. Unlike the default guns which are
fast and agile, the hammer is slow but powerful,
and can only really shine in the hands of
an expert who can read enemy attack patterns
and know when to strike. If a new player tried
using the big hammer, chances are they’d
die very quickly, but for someone on their
journey to mastery, not only is it a fun reward,
but only they will be able to fully understand
and appreciate its use.
And that brings me neatly onto the final and
most important rule of a good secret, that
they’ve got to make the player feel special.
All this time I’ve been going on about secrets
that, give or take a few examples, you as
a player are more or less intended to find
through normal gameplay - and these are completely
valid approaches to secret design, but what
about those big, flashy elusive secrets I
was going on about at the start of the video,
what’s so special about them? Well, it’s
because they’re exclusive.
Secrets like Spelunky’s eggplant run take
a complete and total intimacy with the game
to pull off. For those who don’t know, Spelunky
is a really hard roguelike platformer, it’s
tough enough to beat normally, let alone doing
a play-through where you collect all the secret
Egyptian artefacts, unlock the secret hell
level and fight the secret final boss. But
there’s one more challenge for truly dedicated
players. When you sacrifice a present to Kali
the blood goddess, she gives you an eggplant,
or aubergine if you’re civilised. This thing
is pretty much useless, and splats if you
drop it - but if you manage to bring it aaaalll
the way to king Yama in hell, which requires
total mastery of all of Spelunky’s mechanics,
including the fiddly hired hands, you get
to transform him into an eggplant and pretty
much skip the fight - a journey which is of
course way harder than just playing normally
and fighting him legit. This joke is a special
little moment shared between you and the developer,
to truly appreciate it, you need a level of
love for the game on par with that of the
Derek Yu's, and it’s a final little capstone
to say, well done, you did it.
These sorts of high-level prestige secrets
don’t really need to give players help like
guidance secrets, or extra content as an incentive
to keep playing like mastery secrets, because
if you like the game enough to pursue these
bad boys, then simply getting acknowledged
for your achievement by the developers is
reward enough.
Fez is actually a really great example of
all three types of secret in one, the
yellow cubes require a bit of dimension flipping
but are generally easy to find and are all
you need to finish the game. Blue anti cubes
require some riddle solving and mastery of
the game’s obscure language - and are really
more for advanced players. In return for getting
all of them, expert fez players get to see
the real ending. Finally, you’ve got the
red cubes, which true to form, don’t really
do anything. Each one of these requires incredibly
in depth effort to find, and back in the day,
some of them took the entire internet working
as a team to decipher. Seriously these things
are nuts, the black monolith puzzle was so
fiendish, it took an entire team of players
not to solve it - because that was too hard,
but to brute force it, and try and work out
a hypothetical reasoning for the solution
after the fact, which involves the creator
Phil Fish's love of 2001 a space odyssey and
some insanity involving the game’s Xbox
live release date. Because only the most dedicated
players are going to be going after the red
cubes, all they need for a reward is prestige
- represented in them forming this lovely
rendition of a heart when you put all three
together. Aww.
Fez is a game all about uncovering hidden
layers, and it’s possible that many people
have beaten the game without ever realising
that the red cubes even exist, and that’s
what makes them so special - to collect one
is a mark of honour, and collecting them all
shows that you loved fez so much, that you
were willing to find and complete literally
everything the game had to offer.
That’s why I think the answer to what makes
a good secret has to come down not to how
well it’s hidden or what reward it unlocks,
but the appreciation of a game you’ve got
to have to seek them out in the first place.
A developer putting little jokes, nods and
optional things into a game, either to help
you, test you or praise you for dedicating
time to the game shows an understanding of
the different ways people are going to play
their game - Undertale has a secret storyline
and bosses because Toby Fox Knew players would
try to murder everything, Rockstar put their
infamous “there are no Easter eggs here,
go away” sign on the top of this bridge
because they knew players would try and get
places they weren’t supposed to with the
jetpack. And the Stanley parable has a secret
ending involving the essence of divine art
only accessible if you play a dumb minigame
for four hours, because the developers knew
people would seek it out if it was there.
Secrets are an expression of the mutual appreciation
for a game shared by developer and player,
and there’s no better example of that than
in Shadow of The Colossus. For years, the
shadow of the colossus community scoured the
game for a legendary final secret. Their hunt
became so massive that the developers took
notice, and added a special Easter egg just
for them in the remaster for the PS4, the
79 steps to enlightenment in recognition of
their dedication and love for the game, even
going so far as to thank one of the main secretfinders
Nomad Colossus by name.
And doesn’t that say it all? Whether they
give us something useful, interesting or just
a congratulations, we find secret hunting
fun because it feels like we’re getting
more out of a game than simply a surface-level
look. By going off the beaten path, challenging
our knowledge and skill at a game, or even
using our knowledge of the underlying rules
to try and break them, we’re engaging with
the game on a deeper level, and ultimately-
that’s probably what the designers wanted
all along, good secrets just encourage us
to continue that journey.
And in that grand tradition, if you can decode
this super secret message, you’ll get a
super secret surprise Easter egg… oooooooh!
It’s totally worth it. Trust me. Why would
I lie to you?
Anyway, before you do that - let’s get started
with our usual wrapup where I tell you what
cool content-creating geniuses you should
be watching instead of me - this time it’s
Jacob Geller, who made a fantastic video you’ve
probably seen in your sidebar about that shadow
of the colossus secret thing - he goes incredibly
in depth and there’s even a moral at the
end, fantastic stuff - go watch it.
And of course, if you’d like to support
MY work, you could become on of my fantastic
patrons - who are the sole reason why you’re
not seeing an me do an advert for Raid: Shadow
Legends right now. If you’d like to help
support free, independent games media then
please consider pledging some cash like my
top tier supporters, who are:
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Thank you to all those people, and for you
to watching. And as a special reward for watching
all the way to the end I’ll tell you that
the passcode for the vigenere cipher I posted
earlier is “SECRET”. Have fun! Bye!
