Schools of Game Magic ◾ 149
telling fortunes in a crystal ball or the teenager looking into the bathroom
mirror to see Bloody Mary or Candyman are both examples of scrying.
For scrying to work as a gameplay mechanic, certain elements of
the environment must be designated as hidden, once again reinforcing
the connection between level design and magic systems (see Chapter 6,
Section 6.11). ese hidden elements could be secret doors, hidden but-
tons, or messages scrawled in blood or invisible ink. By hiding certain
elements, level designers and systems designers set up the possibility of
spells that reveal these secrets. Scrying spells can simply toggle the state of
hidden objects to the revealed state, possibly for a limited duration speci ...