I'm in the process of creating a prototype for a 3d space game (3rd person). My question is this:
How can a 3d space game have Zelda-like (or similar) dungeons in open space?
Problems:
Space has no walls (obviously) - how to restrict movement?
No movement restrictions - no doors.
No doors, no interesting mechanics of opening them.
No backtracing (for example after acquiring new power at the end that enables access to a place at the beginning of the dungeon).
More info: The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and Seasons' dungeon design - to see how some Zelda games do it.
The dungeon should be in 1 star system.
The EVE Online example is a good one, in the sense that it has been done before and it works, but for me it always somehow felt like cheating because in EVE you can travel anywhere... but not to a pocket of space right behind the dungeon gate. Even if you had a bookmark there.
And since my game will most likely feature even more free-form travel then EVE (think Elite: Dangerous) then what I'm saying is I'm looking for something that could improve that can be found in EVE.
Answer
Level designers I've spoken with often lament how difficult it is to create interesting challenges & spaces in open areas, so you've definitely set a hard problem for yourself.
That said, the core structure of something like a Zelda dungeon is often about finding a number of MacGuffins (items required to progress) or switches (locations where you modify some dungeon state) in a particular sequence. And so even without walls, you can still introduce structure via the dependency graph of these actions.
Let's run through an arbitrary example (which may not directly align to your gameplay or fiction):
The player wants to get to a warp gate to go to the next space sector (something to act as an end goal, you can replace this with whatever...)
- Because there's no walls, they can just fly up to it, so we have it begin in a powered-off state to put some challenge in their way.
To activate it they'll need to turn on three power-beaming stations around the map.
One station is missing an energy crystal, so they need to go to a nearby asteroid field to collect one.
Another station has a turret that keeps you from getting close. The player needs to go back to the asteroid field and tow an asteroid they can use as a shield.
The final station is damaged, but the spare parts to fix it are in locked chests at the other two stations. The player collects a maintenance key at this station that lets them access the chests.
spare parts collected, they can return to the third station, repair it, then head to the warp gate to escape (and maybe fight the space monster boss lured to it by all the activity)
This lets us construct a reasonably interesting dependency graph without a hard wall that blocks the player anywhere, and gives them cause to re-visit a few previously explored areas in a new context.
Here the variety of interactions has to take up some of the slack left by variety of spatial layouts & approach, since we have fewer tools in open space to control the latter. (Though that doesn't preclude you from introducing constrained spaces at key sites along the graph, like big space stations or wrecks the player needs to navigate into through a controlled number of doors - I avoided such cases above just to show you can get interesting dependency relationships without always going to interior spaces)
The other side of this challenge is landmarking. It's extremely easy to get lost and disoriented in space. If the player is to feel like they're purposefully solving challenges, rather than just chasing a waypoint, you'll need to give them tools to understand where they are and let them plan.
In the example above, we led the player to the asteroid field landmark to find the energy crystal, which ensured they knew it was there when they later needed an asteroid (or vice versa). Coming back to a recognizably familiar landmark like that, with a new purpose in mind, can really help a scenario feel like a space the player is exploring and mastering, rather than a sequence of arbitrary roadblocks.
Consider using things like gassy nebulae, debris fields, space stations, planets, etc. to give players these kinds of landmarks they can recognize.
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