SECRET CONTENT: HOW HIDDEN IS TOO HIDDEN?

In my current project I have bonus items signaled by a sparkle, and it is usually in areas that are harder to get to or you might have to fight along the way to get it.

I like the idea of having "hidden" content, something like an invisible event that gives you 100g or whatever. But I hate pouring time into a too elaborate hidden event because if I end up liking it for being the easter egg that it is I might want it to be more obvious so the player actually sees it.
I'm not too sure how many people click on every square in every game to look for hidden shit anyways, maybe for some games like Blackmoon Prophecy or the like.

so, to sum it up, might as well make it semi-obvious if anything so that the player actually gets to enjoy extra content or helpful items, as long as it presents a small challenge.

Zodiac Spear in FF12 is unarguably too hidden. Let's examine why:

To get the Zodiac Spear, there are two methods. The first method is to not open four specific treasure chests during the game. The first chest is in your hometown right outside the house of a quest NPC that you are forced to visit multiple times, and the other three are scattered in dungeons throughout the game. These chests are indistinguishable from other chests in the game; there is no visual cue to let you know that there is something important or different about them. Also, there is absolutely no hint in-game that not opening these particular chests is how you get the Zodiac Spear, or even that there is ever a reason to not open any chests. If you successfully manage to avoid these four treasure chests, then an extra treasure chest is added to an optional high-level dungeon. This new treasure chest contains the Zodiac Spear, but only if you aren't wearing the accessory that increases the quality of rewards you get from treasure chests. (If you're wearing that accessory, the chest contains a junk item. This is the only time in the game that wearing that accessory is a bad idea - once again, there's no clue given about this fact.)

A second, equally horrible method of obtaining the Zodiac Spear is available to those who fail the first method. A hidden area in a certain mine shaft you can reach near the end of the game has a 10% chance to contain a treasure chest. If you open the chest, it has a 10% chance to contain an item. If it contains an item, that item has a 10% chance to be the Zodiac Spear. This means there is a 1/1000 chance of getting the Zodiac Spear from this room. But it's not a one-time chance - like a lot of treasure chests in the game, this chest respawns if you leave and go at least three rooms away before coming back (rooms which are filled with extremely high level monsters). So you can keep entering and leaving, checking the treasure chest each time you're lucky enough for it to even be there, which which takes a few minutes each time. Note that like the first method, there's no indication that this chest has rare loot, and if the chest isn't there the first time then there's no indication that there could have been one. Also note that UNlike the first method, you do actually have to be wearing the accessory that increases the quality of loot you get from treasure chests; otherwise this chest will always contain a junk item.

The Zodiac Spear is by far the strongest weapon in the game. It's visible in the license grid alongside all the other spears, so it's easy to tell that it exists even if you don't have it and don't know how to get it. It was specifically added to the game in order to sell strategy guides.

So, let's examine the bullshit in the first method:
- Extremely important item
- Permanently missable (the second method still exists but you aren't seriously gonna do that)
- No clues or visual hints
- Ultra-counterintuitive method that no one would ever do on purpose

And the bullshit in the second method:
- Extremely important item
- Takes an average of 35 hours of just walking back and forth checking a single chest over and over
- Extremely low random chance
- No clues or visual hints

Something doesn't have to be this bad to be "too hidden" of course. In fact this is arguably the single worst example in the history of video games. It's a nice case study though.


If you're looking for an entire game designed around stuff that's "too hidden" you should really play an indie adventure game for the computer called La Mulana. Everything in the game supposedly has a clue, but the clues are pretty impossible to decipher, and searching in the wrong places tends to kill you and send you back 20 minutes. And very few of these clues are skippable.

Years of playing video games and hearing about some esoteric thing that literally seems to be impossible to find, actually found by somewhere and is now in every strategy guide under the sun, makes me think there's no real thing as true 'hidden' content; somebody will find it.

FF12 and the Zodaic Spear is a good example of 'dat bullshit' though.

Every time I think of secrets that are too hidden, the one example that jumps immediately to my mind is the most egregiously hidden treasure box in Super Mario RPG.

There are hidden boxes all over the game that, when struck by Mario randomly jumping everywhere, they appear and give you a frog coin. An NPC later in the game can tell you how many of the boxes you've found (there are about fifty of them, I think).

Anyway, you can find almost all the boxes at your leisure. If you missed one, you can always go back and get it.

Except for one of them.

This particular hidden frog coin box has extremely specific circumstances under which it can be obtained. It's in the foyer of Peach's castle, in a secret alcove above a door mantle. Mario can't jump up there on his own; he has to be standing on an NPC to jump high enough to enter. There are NPC Toads in the hall that wander about randomly, whom you could presumably stand on and wait until they're close enough to jump up. Too bad if you only found out about this box now, you can't get it.

Because the ONLY TIME this alcove can be entered is in the very beginning of the game. The first time you enter the castle, a Toad greets you and immediately dashes down the hall and through the door in question. At this very moment, you must jump on this Toad, then up to the alcove as soon as he carries you close enough. If you try this at any other time in the entire game, you can't get up there. It's blocked off by invisible walls (not that the alcove itself was ever apparently visible to begin with). This is also before you even find out invisible blocks exist, or what frog coins are. And any player who missed this block (everyone) and was trying to find all of them for the NPC that told them how many were still left would be rightly irritated.

I avoid bullshit like this at all costs. If the player could never, ever, ever possibly find it on their own without having to look it up, then it's too hidden. Lay your hints and cues out as cleverly as you like, but if no one would ever think to find it, then no one ever will.

The real issue to me with the frog coin thing, halibabica, is that you can't go back and get it later.

Honestly if something is optional, and you can do it at any time, I don't care how hidden it is. I'm probably going to skip most of the optional stuff anyway in most games, and if I don't skip it then it's because I feel like searching for the gameplay that day instead of just sitting down and having the gameplay actually appear when I turn the game on, so I'm already prepared for it.

The Zodiac Spear's second method can technically be done at any time, but requiring 35 hours of re-checking a single chest isn't really a problem of being "too hidden" so much as a problem of being retarded.

The Zodiac Spear isn't the best weapon, the Masamune is far better due to it's crazy combo hit rate which can pseudo-bypass the damage cap. In IZJS the Zodaic Spear still isn't the best due to the inclusion of the Seitengrate bow which has some absurd attack. It also belongs in the list of bullshit hidden stuff. Like the Zodiac Spear it's dumb rare with a 1% chance of the chest spawning and a 1 or 5% chance of the chest actually having the item in question. Oh yeah, it is also in an invisible chest. Sounds like you can RNG manipulate it into dropping 100% of the time at least. And by 'at least' I mean 'what is wrong with you SE'.


Personally, I love hidden and interesting content in games. Not low effort dumb shit like super weapons in rare chests or one chance frog coins or when the stars align so you can see the creator's initials appear. I like hidden content like the heart of the Statue of Liberty in GTA4. 99% of the ones you hear about are fake and 99% of those are dumb Push The Truck to Get Mew ones though. Cracked has some easter egg articles, some good some bad, that I enjoyed reading about too. The good ones (and the creepypasta ones, well, before they turn dumb like they all do) are what inspired me to do that hidden world in RMN Bros 2.

In SMBX, what RMN Bros 2 was made in, you can do Mario World-ish world maps which was used in RMN Bros 2. There were a problems with it though: The only path that start available is the one the player starts on, the player started in a hub world with pipes to take the player to each world, and worlds 1-7 started fully available to the player. This would cause the game to draw the path for each world when the player went to each one which was unacceptable. To bypass this I connected the hub world with invisible paths to all the worlds so the game would think they were all connected and they would start off drawn. Then the old noggin' got working on what to do with that invisible space and I decided to make it an extra secret world. I added some stars on the black background and SMB3 World 8 music to try and give it a bit of a menacing atmosphere (inspired by World Zero in Mushroom Kingdom Fusion). I put in the interesting/really hard levels that got denied due to various reasons for some extra and 100% optional stars. It also had the world part of RMN Bros 1 as a level (The hub world) with the worst level objective (Collecting red coins) modified to drain your will to live.

Getting there was as simple as knowing where the invisible roads are. To avoid players from finding them none were placed where the user had to turn, you'd have to walk off a straight path at the right moment to find the road. This is of course total bullshit. I made the last level of world 8 so I added hints there. It's a Bowser level with an approach half and a Bowser fight half. Twice, once at the Bowser door and after you defeat Bowser there's a door/pipe blocked by Bowser blocks. You don't need to go through the door/pipe to beat the level and move on to world 9, in fact it isn't even clear how you remove the blocks. There's a secret pipe halfway through the first part of the stage the player can't see as it's off the bottom of the screen that leads to a switch that controls the Bowser blocks. The only hint that the pipe is there is it's in a segment with thwomps that fall offscreen and die except one thwomp is placed above the pipe and will hit it when he falls and not go offscreen like the others. This does require the player to make a connection that the thwomp didn't die for no reason and something they can use is down there and find the pipe. The switch will toggle Bowser blocks to appear all over the level and the exit pipe takes the player back to the start. The new Bowser blocks are placed to make the level even more difficult and prevent the player from using the midpoint at the end of the first half of the level. If the player can clear a quarter of the level, trigger the switch, redo the first half of the level but harder, and beat bowser in an even worse arena without dying there's a hint that the player should walk off a one tile bridge in a world to find the hidden world.


I hope to do something like that in a future game because I really do enjoy those kinds of secrets. I don't mind if nobody ever finds them (iirc Davenport was the first to report finding the hidden world), making them and that feeling that maybe someday somebody will trip over it is enough to motivate me.

Of course because it's me I fucked up the star count so in the original release of RMN Bros 2 the final level wasn't even accessible.

*edit*
Lazy Shells are missable. You can sell the seeds you need to grow to get them.

On the note of missable optional stuff, IMO it depends on the length of the game and how well it leads to replayability. Short play games like roguelikes would do well with missable optional content but the typical RPG doesn't. At all.

This is an interesting topic and I'll try to catch up later, but all I can say right now is that people often won't look for hidden stuff in your game. So don't hide anything, except if your game is just too awesome or if you don't mind the fact that people might never find it.

author=caluno
people often won't look for hidden stuff in your game.

They absolutely will. How do you think most stuff is found? SaGa Frontier is like 15 years old and people are still looking and finding secret stuff in that game.

If you enjoy a game, you'll play it, and everything that entails.

I freaking LOVE finding hidden shit in games.