PSBlog Feed: How narrative-driven puzzles shape Causal Loop’s world and progression, out April 23

[Commander Fury]

Causal Loop has always been a dream project for us. For the past four years now, it has grown far beyond what we initially expected. Once you start pulling on the thread that unites the game’s story and its mechanics, you realize very quickly that you can’t just brush past certain ideas or dance around them. If a puzzle exists in the world, it needs an explanation.

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Story and puzzles are designed together, not separately 

Initially, we didn’t design the puzzles together with the story. During the prototyping phase, we were sketching out mechanics and figuring out what worked in several iterations of the same puzzle. But relatively early on, we realized that we wanted to tell a much more involved story, and that to tell this story well, the gameplay had to be complementary.

We expanded on the already designed puzzles, so they made sense within the story. The core mechanics stayed the same, but their purpose shifted. It’s no longer just about opening a door or unlocking a gate. Now, you might be controlling a device that has a clear narrative function or searching for something that ties directly into what happened before.

The puzzles and the story became inseparable, because the story naturally started interacting with the gameplay in a way that tied them together.

Much like the story itself, the puzzles are also intrinsically about choices and causality, your choices are embedded in every action you take. It goes hand in hand. Especially when you’re recording echoes of yourself, every movement becomes a deliberate decision.

Echo system and diegetic design

A good example of how deeply integrated everything is would be the echo system and how we present it to the player.

We use a diegetic interface, meaning everything you see as a player is also what the protagonist sees. So, when you create an echo for the first time, it wouldn’t make sense for it to be highlighted or to display a path immediately. Instead of just adding them as gameplay elements into our UI, we built them into the story, with Bale asking Walter to implement a way to visualize them.

A common issue in puzzle games is that disconnect where players ask: why is this here? Especially in environments that are supposed to feel real or functional. We considered this throughout our development, to ensure there was a reason the puzzles exist on the planet. If players pay attention, they will understand why things are the way they are and that the systems they are interacting with are part of something larger.

To heighten the player’s immersion, we also use lead-in and lead-out areas to control how players move through the experience. Before a puzzle, we often focus on story. This is where we are able to introduce context, build tension, or deliver key information. Then, once you’re in the puzzle, the focus shifts to gameplay, framed by the larger picture of the current scene happening in the story. It’s a deliberate structure, and we adjust it constantly depending on what is needed narratively at that moment.

Worldbuilding emerges through interactive problem-solving

Our first version of the way we tried telling our story didn’t feel right and was too much telling and not enough showing, with characters commenting on everything the player saw. It felt unnatural.

Instead of relying heavily on character narration, we leaned into environmental storytelling and player discovery. The world itself gives you clues, like collapsed structures, old recordings, or remnants of past events. You’re not being told exactly what happened but piecing it together yourself. In the end, we settled for a mix of clear conveyance, environmental storytelling and dialogue. If one of those elements is missing, players risk misunderstanding key aspects of what’s going on. Naturally, trying to eliminate this risk leads to a lot of iteration.

A good example is the force fields that only affect echoes. In earlier versions, they looked like solid barriers, so players assumed they couldn’t pass through, even though they could. So in many cases we had to adjust the presentation, to always make sure there is some kind of clue or clarity, without explaining too much. And this is the way we went about not only the puzzle design but also the worldbuilding.

For example, we developed details like the Tor calendar system because we needed that context ourselves. If we’re attaching dates to objects or recordings, those dates have to make sense within the culture. That’s a typical trap when writing: you realize you need more context, not for the player, but for yourself.

Only a small part of that information ends up in the game, but it’s enough that players could, in theory, reverse-engineer it if they wanted to.

Shared creative vision across a small development team

I’m very drawn to the existential side of science fiction. What does it mean if there are multiple versions of you? Are you still the original? What happens to your echoes?

Daniel is much more focused on the gameplay experience. He wants the mechanics to feel clean and intuitive, without the story getting in the way or over-explaining things.

This is why Daniel focuses on the puzzle logic, while I build the narrative logic around it: how you enter the puzzle, what it means in the story, and how you leave it again. Then we take a step back and ask: does this make sense from both a gameplay and a story perspective? That balance is what makes it work.

There have been several instances where the story made us reconsider the design of a level. While in one chapter we had to change the layout of the whole level to match the way the story had evolved and had to accommodate an additional cutscene, we had to redesign the puzzle to keep the narrative tension of a scene without the player having to suddenly leave the area in another one. In that second example, that puzzle alone went through four or five major iterations.

Besides the game design and the narrative intertwining in such a natural way, players can also look forward to the game performing very well from a technical standpoint. Daniel and I have not only learned much about the world we created together, and about working with each other in the process of creating Causal Loop, but also learned – and keep learning – a lot about Unreal Engine 5. Our experience of having been in the industry for almost 20 years, means we were able to incorporate all of those learnings into the workflow quite smoothly.

It’s been amazing to see people already engaging with Causal Loop and supporting us along the way by playing the demo and joining in with their thoughts and feedback. We hope that players will enjoy the finished version of the game with all of its secrets, connections, and hidden layers that reward those who take the time to look deeper.

Causal Loop launches on PlayStation 5 on April 23.

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