The Layer Cake of Experience
A design lens for an experiential moment
One of the design methods I use when creating a moment is to think about a stack of elements that combine in the player’s head to make them feel a particular way right here, right now, because it’s not just about what they can sense, it’s also about what they already know and what they anticipate.
If I step through all of these layers, I can start figuring out of how to boost each one — which could be by foreshadowing, drip-feeding information, being careful about pacing, and looking at how it fits into the player’s expectations.
I’ll put some examples here from the point of view of a physical horror moment — as usual, it’s easy to talk about horror. But all of these can be applied to other flavours of moment, and other media.
The layers are laid out in order of when the player is primed for that layer. Some of the layers the player may have gleaned information from months or years ago — from stories they learned as a child, or adverts they saw for the experience. Some may be from five minutes ago, in the previous room. Some are right now!
For each layer, I think about how it affects the player’s state of mind at the point of the moment — and how I might improve on that moment by fine-tuning that layer, using it to guide my design. And about how that layer interacts with the ones before it, and the ones that will come after.
So let’s step through each layer, from the lowest up — that is, from the farthest back in time to right now.
Mythic Memory
“What is everyone telling me?”
This layer is all about what “everyone knows”. The group consciousness of your cultural and social background. A huge library of myths, legends, pop culture, urban myths, and ‘that’s just how the world works’.
Are people shambling about, acting weird, and saying “braaaaains”? Zombies! It’s infectious!
Is the corpse pale-skinned, and has two suspicious round puncture marks on its neck? Vampires! And even if not everyone in an audience group knows about vampires, someone in the group is sure to point it out, and if asked “What do you mean by a vampire?” they will be only too happy to explain in lurid detail.
Our mythic memory is constantly being expanded, sometimes deliberately. Don’t say Candyman five times in front of a mirror. Don’t watch that old VHS tape. Is that an impossibly tall, pale figure in the background of my photograph…?
We can use these tropes and archetypes. It’s a great shorthand to immediately put people in a particular state of mind — each myth brings a long list of baggage, and the player will immediately start thinking about that.
“Zombies! But which type of zombie? A slow one, or a 28 Days Later one I’ll have to run from? I’d better start looking into every corner, there could be a zombie anywhere! What if I get bitten? What if my friend gets bitten? Am I sure Dave hasn’t already been bitten?”
Of course, using a myth in the way everyone expects can feel boring and stereotypical. So it might be useful to subvert or reshape a myth in a way that still instantly snaps the audience into the mindset you want — but be careful: if you reject their preconceptions too directly, they might not understand what just happened.
Even if you don’t use a myth directly, you can use something that’s very reminiscent of it — a new flavour that might kick-start your participant’s speculations.
This shared mythos doesn’t need to come from stories or narrative knowledge. For example, if this experience is branded as made by Disney, then the participant’s expectations will be much higher than, say, if it’s an experience organised by their local council — and that will change their anticipation of every moment.
Personal Resonance
“What is my own experience telling me?”
How can our moment connect with the audience member’s personal experience? It will make it more powerful and relatable if it resonates with them. But everyone’s different — so how do you know what will land with a specific participant?
Well, you might explicitly personalise it by finding a way to get them to select their fears somewhere earlier in the experience, but this can be hard to handle for your content.
But we all have a lot in common, even for personally relatable moments. Most people have felt lost in their lives, lonely, or might be scared of the dark. They might once have been trapped in a closet. They might have a fear of snakes, or of spiders, or of heights. Don’t be too specific — pick elements that will resonate with a broad spectrum of the audience.
But remember — a moment doesn’t have to personally connect with the whole audience. So long as one or two people in the group respond, their reactions will infect the others.
But I do think it’s important to have a bit of variety in moment choices here, to try to make sure that everyone in the audience finds something in the experience to resonate with.
Context
“What is the setting telling me?”
“It said in the guidebook that this house used to be owned by One-eyed Jack, the psychopathic optometrist.”
“Can someone turn the light on?”
“Dave, the light is on!”
“I… I can’t see…”
“Dave… ohmigod… look at his eyes!”
What does the audience know about what might happen as they proceed through the experience? What is the “plot”? Are they expecting to rescue someone? Are they on the lookout for a mystical tome?
And where are they right now in terms of the story? Are they somewhere near the end, so think they’re due to meet “the bad guy” at the climax? Have they seen hints and shadows of a monster so are certain they will meet it soon?
This can be heightened by plenty of foreshadowing, attention to pacing, and even such things as raising key story expectations by making it part of the marketing or onboarding.
Again, the connection here doesn’t need to be ‘in the story’. Reviews for this attraction could be amazing, and you could have had friends saying “There’s this one Big Moment about half way through!” which could completely change your anticipation and stress levels for a particular moment.
Deduction
“What is the space telling me?”
As the audience member stands here in this room, what is it telling them? Does it look like a torture chamber? Is there slick blood pouring down the walls? Is the door shaking as if its about to open? Are there big spikes pointing downwards from the roof? Is there a pool of blood, a pile of broken teeth, and a hammer?
“I think I know what happened here… oh no.”
This is conscious deduction — or rather, deduction in overdrive, as in self-defence you start desperately overthinking all the possibilities. Linking it back to the other layers, knowing the context, or the wider mythic memory.
This is triggered by careful environmental storytelling — something that themed experiences, immersive theatre, and videogames all know a lot about.
Instinct
“What is my body telling me?”
Your heart starts thumping, you’re dripping with sweat, muscles tense, and you may not even know why. You react before you can stop yourself.
This level of design is targeted at the subconscious. This is the level of jump-scares, of fight-or-flight, of “I’ve got a bad feeling about this…” All your senses are desperately trying to protect you from danger.
It doesn’t have to be a sudden shock, it can be a slow burn. Perhaps the designer has altered the temperature in this room, and a chill passes through the audience members. Or the room is subtly tilted, and the audience know there’s something wrong, but they can’t quite figure it out… everything’s just… weird. They may never figure out the truth — they just know something’s not right.
Feed Them the Whole of the Cake
Ideally, all of these layers combine and reinforce each other for the player to reach inevitable, instant conclusions about what is happening to them right now and how they feel about it.
As I said at the start, the emotions you design for don’t have to be fear, of course. And this doesn’t necessarily need to be a physical experience — it could equally apply to other media — although the Instinct layers are inevitably more restricted for video games or movies, given we’re dealing with a smaller palette of senses.
Whatever your recipe and your ingredients, when it all blends together you’ll have drastically raised your chances that your audience members will be deeply affected by the moment — that they’ll be able to read it, understand it, and feel it. Whether it’s a moment of horror, a moment of awe, or a moment of joy.
