Game Idea: A short distraction

I spent some time the other daythinking about other game ideas I've had, and I remembered some mini-games I came up with to entertain people in my guild when I was playing World of Warcraft.  One particular crowd-pleaser was when I got everyone to make a brand new character (gnomes, of course, because they're like the little jesters of the WoW community) and we stripped off all our equipment and went for a run through extremely dangerous territory.

I actually ended up writing down my ideas for making a stand-alone game like this, though I'll probably never get around to actually making it, I thought why not post what I came up with!  So without further ado, I give you "Diaper-clad Gnome Death Race: The Game (For Shadow)"

A common sight, naked gnome about to die!

Gnome Death Race
Possible multiple game modes:
- First to reach the finish line, no other criteria.
- Least amount of deaths en route.
- Most ...treasure collected? < Don't worry about this unless the game is fully functional already.
- "Survival mode" - you have one life, how far can you get? (measure either distance or time)
- Time to reach finish line, plus a penalty for amount of deaths...
  - This may be too similar to a mix of the first two
- "Super Survival mode" (Gauntlet) - You have one life, plus you're being swarmed like crazy.
  - Every enemy that gets removed from the screen generates some sort of boost...

Basic layout:
- Pick a character - names like "Shaddohsmelz" and so forth
  - Unlock heroes like Shadowsmallz, Michrowave, and "The OG Shadow"
    - ...These unlockables are even more slightly faster?
- Bird's Eye view of the area...
- There should be a fairly limited visibility, compared to how big the race is.
- Your character is always in the middle of the screen
  - This provides good visibility in front of and behind for fairness
- HUD
  - Time (Current & High Score?), Deaths (when in sv mode, just display "SURVIVE!"), ...health?

Gameplay:
- Start in a safe area ...with several contestants? (ripe for MP functionality)
  - At the beginning of the race, enemies are few and far between, and slower.
  - As you progress through, they become more and more common until it's almost certain death
- Up/down/left/right moves the character
- There is no way to attack or defend.

Here was the finish line, yes, those are gnome bones.

- The player should be *slightly* faster than enemies (like by 3 px/frame at most)
  - That way, it's possible to move ahead not only by dying
- If/when the player dies, they will have to regenerate in place (3-5 second penalty)
  - The clock does not stop while this happens (the race happens in real-time)
- ...Possible powerups?
  - Use on pickup, or save and use whenever? Probably save and use with a key.
  - Speed boost
  - Slow down or outright freeze enemies
  - Burn up all onscreen enemies
  - Push away enemies - just move them directly away from the player about 80px

Miscellaneous:
- In-game taunts- press a key to blurt out a taunt to the other players
  - example: Press "1" for "Suck my dust!"

First (and second) look - early mechanics

I've gotten some work for the game engine going, so I thought I'd share a couple early videos of what there is so far.  Don't be put off by the placeholder art, although it's lovingly crafted, it's not representative of what the final game will look like.

Here's the first video I posted, where you can see how the character jumps and interacts with terrain...there's still so much to be done to make it work, but it's a start.

This next video showcases the fact that the terrain is built on black boxes to indicate where the ground would be, which would have a graphical layer drawn over it.  It also shows the game camera which follows the character to the middle of the screen, then scrolls the background until it hits an edge.  This way the character will always feel like the center of attention.

All feedback is welcome, positive or negative.

A casual gamer in a hardcore world - Part 1

Maybe the title isn't exactly what I'm going for, but close enough. Since I'm planning to have a game that's landing in a genre traditionally considered somewhat hardcore, I wanted to get opinions from someone who's not familiar with this type of gameplay.

I put the task to my fiancee (whose only gaming experience is World of Warcraft), and set up a copy of Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow for her to play. In my opinion, it's a fairly accessible example of the Metroidvania style, but I was about to learn what player-friendly really means… I should point out that I have a lot of information at hand, so I'll be spreading it out over multiple posts so this one doesn't run on forever.

Soul Trade isn't explained in-game at all...

I want to preface this by saying that besides explaining how the various buttons work on the controller, I tried as hard as possible not to interfere, tell her where to go or what to do. I wanted to hear her untainted feedback about a game that can be rather unforgiving. Don't worry, there's some good in with the bad. Let's begin, shall we?

The first thing I noticed when she started up the game was that the screen where you get to start a new game was not very intuitive. Before you could choose "New Game" there was a menu screen where you can choose from the options "Select Data", "Copy Data", "Erase Data" - it doesn't take long to figure this out, but it can easily make the player feel like they fell into some data management nightmare by mistake. Maybe the New Game option is back on the main menu, she thought, and went back to it.

During the opening cutscene, there was a part where the player's character is about to be attacked. She told me she pressed the attack button in response to the enemy coming in to attack. This means the cutscene did a great job of capturing her attention and even bringing on a little intensity.

When I asked her about it, she said she wasn't very interested in the opening dialog, although it may have been mostly due to the fact that she wanted to jump in and start playing. She did tell me that she tried to pay enough attention to characters being introduced so she hopefully wouldn't be confused later.

Doesn't this make you want to fight back?

The lack of in-game tutorials really hurt the starting experience for her, I had to explain how the special attack abilities worked, like what button combo used them, and how they cost mana (and how mana recovers over time or from collecting hearts from breaking candlesticks), which really added a whole new level of strategy to combat. I know the game comes with a manual, but game designers shouldn't rely on expecting every player to have read it before turning on the game for the first time.

There were some issues that came up that could be better described as classic game conventions, so I won't chalk those up to being faults of the game. Things like not understanding that the enemies hurt the player on contact, or that opening the menu pauses the game, or how to know that your character can't attack again while the attack animation is still playing. It's still worth noting that, while rare almost by definition, there may be some people playing that don't know these rules, and it's probably ok to quickly explain the basics if it's done in an in-game manual or something.

In conclusion, I'd like to point out that these issues came up in just the first few minutes of playing, which can be a crucial time period to get new players interested in the game. Especially with demos and Let's Play videos being so prevalent, it's important to make sure those first impressions count as much as possible. Stay tuned, next time we'll talk about getting into dangerous territory with various enemies and unexpected situations like not knowing whether or not the player character can swim.

Putting ideas together

One of the things I've found to be trickiest about designing a game is expanding in all the necessary ways from the initial idea.  It's nice to come up with something like "let's make a treasure hunter guy like Indiana Jones and put him in all sorts of historical settings like Egyptian ruins!"  That certainly sounds like a solid idea (forgive me for my bias, this is the game I'm currently working on...) but it's a far cry from being specific enough to actually build a game on.

There's a lot more to it than that, including but definitely not limited to things like what enemies/conflict will there be, how big will the game area be, whether or not there will be non-hostile characters for the player to interact with, and so on.

I've been working on nailing down more specifics to get the game more fleshed out, and when I do this it's easy to take things too far.  For instance, in a side-scrolling action/adventure game, to get to higher platforms or across wider gaps, double jump is a pretty standard game mechanic, but what if I think about adding areas that are a little more out of reach than that, the player would need an ability that can allow him to get to those areas...should the player be able to fly with a jetpack or something?  It's too early to tell on things like this, and that's the point where I have to step back and say, "I'll come back to this later."

Flexibility is important in a game's design, I think, but changing and adding design elements should be considered carefully.  I remember reading something that went something like, in contrast to thinking outside the box, it's better to think on the edge of the box.  To put it in my own words, it's good to expand your thinking, but stay in familiar territory or things can quickly get out of hand.  To the above example of player movement abilities, giving the player a jetpack may not quite be the perfect idea, but it's probably a lot closer than, say, having the player turn into a bird to be able to fly.  Both examples here accomplish the same goal, but one would feel far more abstract in the world I'm trying to build.