Extended Practice Hub World Research: Crash Bandicoot Games

I then moved onto looking at Hub worlds in games to be able to get a better understanding at what is functional in a game environment to transport you to other levels in the world. As this is a feature that we want to include in our own game it seemed like a great idea to begin to look at a few games that had some really nice hub world designs to see if they can be adapted for our own levels. 

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back
The first game that I looked at was the second Crash Bandicoot game, as the first had an island that you walk around to get to the next level, this 'warp room' idea fits the game much more appropriately creating a room in which you have doors that you can go through to take you to the next level. The mechanic which this game uses is a portal that sucks Crash up to bring him back here at the end of the level, and once he has completed all the levels on the floor, he is taken via portal to the next set of doors. Each floor has a slightly different look to it, but are usually spherical in shape with spherical portals coming off.

I do very much like this idea for the hub world, it's very simple in it's looks and it's easy to see what has been collected on each level already and it's easy to see what each level is called and it's easy to get into that level, by simply walking into the portal that will transport you there. The only downside is that the order of the levels isn't as obvious as it could be, they are just situated around the circle in the middle and they could be accessed in any order, something that would be considered for our own level.

Crash Bandicoot: Warped
The next game in the series that I think does a fantastic job of creating a hub world is Warped, the third game in the series. The hub world has been designed very nicely and is set on the top of a castle, with a mixture of castle features like with the brick and wood, but then also industrial with the added metal and technology onto the floors and barriers. It's an interesting mix and does work well. The levels are put into groups of 5 and are separated into bundles at the end of all of the branches coming out from the centre. Each of these branches also have there own mini theme, but this does not correlate to the levels that are featured on that branch.

The design for this hub world is very interesting and there is a lot of variety in the structure of the assets that are all around the end parts. The interesting thing for me is how to get onto a level though. When approaching the end of the branched pathway 5 blue buttons appear on the floor and when you run onto one a portal appears in the middle with the information about the level and the things that can be collected on there making it very simple and easy to tell what needs to be collected. Where the design stops is in these buttons though, there appear out of the ground and do not fit with the rest of the colour schemes in the game and stand out a lot, and not in a good way. This aside they are numbered making it easy to tell which is the first level, and also which is going to be the mini boss.

Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex
The last game that I looked at was Wrath of Cortex which was the last game in the series to produce any kind of hub world like this. The later games went off on a tangent and moved away from the traditional Crash look in most ways, including the 'warp room' aspect. This for me isn't that creative though and does just resemble the one in the last game, Warped. There isn't much difference in the design, as again it is set in a room that branches into smaller parts which feature the 5 levels at a time, which are again numbered. The design just isn't that exiting though and does just use the same ideas as the last game in many ways apart from this looks more like the inside to a computer.