Making Ori and The Will of the Wisps' Best Level

The Windswept Wastes in Ori and the Will of the Wisps is a desert area built around a dangerous climb, crumbling platforms, sand burrowing, giant laser beams, and a final escape from a monster worm.

The design did not begin with the desert fantasy first. It began with mechanics. One early task was to find interesting level-design situations for platforms that collapse when the player stands on them.

Those platforms were simple at first: a basic prototype and a question. How many different situations could this one element create?

Some sketches used a platform more than once. The player might jump on it, avoid touching the ground, cross to another side, then use the platform again when it returned to climb higher. Another sketch forced the player to drop, catch themselves after falling, and double jump out.

The point was to workshop the element. Take one available piece, explore its properties, combine it with constraints, and search for scenarios that reveal something new.

One especially strong setup asked the player to break the platforms on purpose in order to guide a projectile across the room.

That reverses the normal expectation. A collapsing platform usually threatens the player because standing on it removes safe ground. Here, the disappearance becomes the tool. The player has to make every platform vanish without touching the ground so the projectile can pass.

That is the value of workshopping. The same object can be floor, timer, hazard, switch, path, or absence. A designer finds those uses by trying many small arrangements before the area has a final shape.

The area's central ability is burrow: the power to dig through sand and launch out of it. That ability did not appear because the team already had a desert and needed a desert move.

The starting question was broader: what new movement could complement Ori's already robust moveset? A digging ability, inspired in part by a traversal idea from Sonic Colors, seemed like a strong fit for a Metroidvania.

Early sketches treated burrow as a way to solve spaces Ori could not normally cross. If spikes prevented a wall jump, the player could dig through a sand wall and launch out. If normal jump height was too low, the player could dive into sand, aim out, and clear a higher obstacle.

Hanging balls of sand made the move more versatile. The player could enter from any side and launch out in a straight line, turning each sand pocket into an aiming and momentum tool.

The best sketches showed situations that simply would not work without the new ability. That is a useful test for a new move: it should not be a key for a special door, but a change in how the player reads and crosses space.

After the sketches, the next step was to rebuild those situations in blockout form and ask the programmers and animators for the first playable version.

That is the moment when an imagined move becomes a real control problem. The early burrow prototype felt slower than the final version, and its turning was looser.

The initial intention was to make movement through sand feel a bit tricky, with some friction and loss of nimbleness. But repeated playtests pushed the move toward tighter control.

That choice came from the broader game feel. Ori is a tight-control game overall, so the sand move eventually needed to match that language instead of fighting it. The ability still feels different, but it belongs to the same character.

At first, the collapsing platforms and the burrow ability were separate ideas. The connection arrived later, through a level-design problem.

One early challenge placed collapsing platforms above lasers. The player had to land, wait, glide, and drop through the laser at the right moment. It worked as a one-way sequence.

That is acceptable in a linear platformer, where a sequence can collapse behind the player and the level simply continues. In a Metroidvania, it is a problem. The player must be able to backtrack, re-explore, and re-traverse.

The solution was to give sand the collapsing behavior. Now the platforms could disappear and reappear, but the player could also dig through them on the way back.

That combination opened up more flow and more possibilities. The collapsing platform was no longer just a temporary floor; it became a sand surface, a burrow route, and a reversible piece of traversal design.

After the player gets burrow, the area does not immediately tell them exactly where to go. That creates a trust problem: how do you let players experiment without losing them?

The answer is to give the player options that converge. In the Windswept Wastes, there are multiple ways back to the main path. Players can explore, discover what burrow does, and still eventually arrive where the level needs them to be.

This creates the feeling of openness without abandoning the route. The player is free to poke around, but all roads quietly lead toward the same destination.

A good difficulty curve depends on understanding the layers of complexity inside each mechanic.

With burrow, standing on a sand floor, holding down, and pressing the burrow button is simple. Aiming through a hanging sand ball is much more complicated because it adds trajectory, timing, and execution.

The designer has to judge where each layer belongs. What can the player understand first? What should arrive after they are comfortable? What combination asks for mastery rather than basic comprehension?

One useful rule is not to exhaust one element's entire difficulty ladder in a row. If every escalation of a mechanic is taught back-to-back and then abandoned, the level can feel like a lesson plan. Mixing elements and returning to them later creates more variety and a more natural curve.

The area is packed with secrets, but the best secrets are not random or cruel.

A hidden wall might include a small lip that guides the eye. A breakable wall might have a visual difference without screaming its purpose. The clue is present, but the player still gets the pleasure of noticing it.

The goal is not to make players jump blindly off the edge of the screen in hope. The goal is to make them feel smart when they spot something unusual, test it, and find a reward.

That philosophy is especially important in a Metroidvania, where secrets are part of the main pleasure. Hidden rewards should reward observation, not paranoia.

One memorable room asks the player to dig through sand while avoiding a giant laser beam. It was one of the earliest prototypes for the area, and it survived because it captured the promise of burrow in a dramatic way.

The room was not easy to tune. It went through iteration and pushback because the first versions were demanding. But it served as a strong ramp-up toward the final burrow challenges, and it was memorable enough to justify the work.

That is another useful design test. A difficult room is easier to defend when it is not merely hard, but expressive. It should show why the ability exists.

In the second act of Ori and the Will of the Wisps, the player can visit several areas in a flexible order. That freedom creates many design constraints.

A player may arrive with different abilities, which can create unintended solutions. For example, a challenge built around sand worms can be bypassed with another tool if the player already has it.

The designers accepted some of that. If a player solves a situation with a tool they earned elsewhere, and the solution is still interesting, that can be part of the cost and value of freedom.

The harder question is balance. The team did not want one area to quietly tell players they were not ready through enemies or challenges that felt too difficult. If the player chose an area, they should be able to complete that area at that stage of the game.

Windswept Wastes was an outlier because it eventually gates story progress. The player can enter early, explore the desert, and earn burrow, but at a later point they are told to explore elsewhere before continuing.

That could feel anticlimactic, so the level softens the stop. A fast-travel point sits close to the blocked temple, and the player still leaves with a new ability, experience, upgrades, and rewards.

The Windtorn Ruins near the end of the area were originally planned as a dungeon with another new ability: drill, which would burrow through thick rock blockers.

That ability was cut because it did not feel versatile enough. It risked becoming a key for one kind of door instead of a movement tool that changed how the game was played.

The dungeon was replaced with a more linear storytelling section. That choice helped pacing. After many intense burrow challenges, and before one of the hardest escape sequences in the game, the player needed a break.

A level does not have to escalate forever. Sometimes the right move is to lower the mechanical intensity so the next spike can land properly.

The final escape sequence has to be hard enough to feel exciting, but not so hard that it becomes tedious trial and error.

A useful target is that most of the escape should flow naturally. The player should see the screen, understand most obstacles quickly, and perform under pressure. A smaller portion can contain curveballs that surprise them.

Even those surprises need to be reactable. If a random trigger drops something on the player's head with no readable warning, the failure feels unfair. A good escape makes the player think: I saw that too late, but I can do better next time.

The result is a sequence where dying once or twice can be part of learning, but dying five or ten times starts to damage the pacing.

The area had far more ideas than the final game could use: a physical block that would fall after tunneling out the ground beneath it, a larger worm that left an acid trail, and thin sand platforms that bounced the player out like trampolines.

Some ideas were technically costly. Others were novel but not clearly better for the game. The process was to find what players could understand, appreciate, and enjoy within the level's real constraints.

That is why the burrow works so well in Windswept Wastes. It is not just a desert gimmick. It shapes traversal, secrets, backtracking, difficulty, set pieces, optional solutions, and the final escape.

The best level in a game often comes from that kind of narrowing: many sketches, many prototypes, many cut ideas, and one mechanic strong enough to organize the whole space.