8 Ways Video Games Blew Your Mind (Without You Realising)

There's no doubt in my mind that making a video game must be one of the most stressful jobs going.

I mean just imagine how migraine-inducing it must be to take a level that works perfectly, add in another element that you know works in isolation, and then watch as your entire project melts into oblivion. Then imagine having to rework things in such a way that these two elements which should bloody well just work but somehow don't actually cooperate with each other.

Well for video game Titan Quest, the answer was as simple as it was utterly insane.

Invisible Squirrels.

Yes, you heard me right. So it turns out that according to Arthur Bruno the lead designer of Titan Quest, the game had a real issue with not being able to delay actions/events after a trigger was hit. This made for some rather infuriating moments where the team would want a door to open or close on a delay but the game simply wouldn't allow them to do this.

As the team was already under significant time pressure and resources weren't readily available, QA testers were brought in to help generate solutions and it was one of these unnamed heroes that came up with the idea of using the idle animations of squirrels to delay the events after triggering.

Soon this became the default timing mechanic in the game and were made invisible to hide this rather strange solution from the player. So if it ever feels like you're being watched while playing this game, you quite literally are.