Level 6 of North Is Not Up is finished. Loch Ailsa has taken a while, but the islands, woodland and open water now form a complete course with twelve controls and a return to the finish.
When I wrote about starting the level, much of the work was underneath the surface: loading the landscape, making swimming work and keeping landings ready as the player crossed the loch. This final stretch was about completing that world and making it worth navigating.
Giving the loch a course
The controls must be visited in order, but the route between them is up to the player. That distinction became particularly useful around the northern bridge. A direct swim cuts the distance, while the longer land route preserves stamina. Running makes the bridge more competitive, so the shortest line on the map does not settle the decision for you.
I revised the control positions to make those choices more useful and give the southern woodland a proper part in the return journey. The course now has its start, timing, split times, results and saved best time.
Swimming also received a final adjustment. I increased stamina use and replaced the text readout with a clearer bar. Opening the map still leaves the player treading water while the current carries them, so choosing where to stop and think is part of the navigation too.
Making the ground feel finished
A surprising amount of the remaining work was at the edges of things. Some shorelines looked too angular, paths had awkward joins, and patches of ground vegetation were arranged too neatly.
I softened those shapes and checked that the changes still worked underfoot. One shoreline adjustment made a landing too steep, so I corrected the bank rather than changing what the character could climb. A better-looking shore is not much use if the player can no longer get out of the water.
The woodland gained ferns, flowers, fallen branches and more irregular patches of growth. Deer and foxes now move through it, and I fixed trees sitting badly in the ground or overlapping rocks. Those small corrections helped the separate areas feel like parts of the same place.
Ending at sunset
The most visible finishing touch is the light. Loch Ailsa now has a low sun, warm highlights, pink haze and cooler water. Gull Island’s beacon has a glow and a rotating beam across the loch.
I also restored the meadow ambience, tidied the map key and added the opening briefing. I wrote the lines and used ElevenLabs text-to-speech to generate the voice audio, with playback tied into the game’s existing sound settings.
The automated course checks covered control order, returning to previously visited areas, recovery and saving results. The final scenery and lighting changes had shorter performance checks; a renderer warning on shutdown remains in the development notes.
Loch Ailsa now brings the map reading, route choice and swimming together in one finished level. The water gives each crossing something to think about, and the sunset gives the loch a character of its own.
