Forest Ruins

Ancient Magic Hotspot in the South Hogwarts Region

The Context

While working on Hogwarts Legacy, I was part of the Overlands team, fleshing out the optional open world content. As part of this, I was tasked with creating a few different ancient magic hotspots, puzzle locations where the player activates a central hub spot and then must gather three different pickups to expand their ancient magic meter.

The existing location was barebones, but I wanted to keep the well and the ruins intact.

I began researching existing castles in Scotland and other areas of the UK. These areas around Hogwarts had never really been explored in films or other games, so we had a fair amount of freedom, but I wanted it to be grounded in the Scottish countryside.

I started by blocking off different areas, so everything wouldn't be open and easily accessible, but would require some puzzle solving. I also added some scaffolding to the area, as if it were being restored or maintained in some way, and I moved the well to the center to serve as a focal point.

I also added a back section onto the ruins, with burnable vines and a few small spiders to surprise the player.

Vanessa Palmer supplied us with some really excellent concept art, which also had this spiraling vegetation to it.

I created a well in the middle of the ruins as a focal point. This was potentially the very first ancient magic puzzle that the player would find in our game, so I kept the puzzle fairly simple, with the three pickups in really close proximity. It's especially easy if the player already has the broom, which is likely. The basis of the ruins was a prefab that I placed down and cobbled together.

Pickup 3

Two bandits here initially to add a bit of flavor

Pickup 1

Pickup 2

Hub

The player can see the first of three ancient magic pickups through this door, but they have to access it by climbing or flying onto this ruin section and coming in through the roof.

The player can see the second of three ancient magic pickups through this door, but they have to access it by walking around the back, blowing up some crates, and crouching through (or they can fly in from the top).

The player must break some boards to find a box to use to get on these platforms (or they can fly if they already have the broom, but since this is early in the game, I designed for both potential outcomes).

The player can use the same box to get the second pickup.

Once the player is up on the scaffold, they can burn through some vines to get the third pickup.

One of the things that I loved about designing puzzles for this game was the breadth of tools at the player's disposal, meaning we generally tried to create multiple methods that the player could use to solve the puzzle.