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Game Design: Spy Party

Sep 6

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Another Penny Arcade Expo has ended.  There were concerts, a few surprises, and plenty of good games to see.  Out of all the games I saw, the one that intrigued me the most was Spy Party.

Spy Party

Spy Party

Spy Party is a multiplayer game for the PC involving patience, subterfuge, and careful observation.  Player 1 acts as the Spy.  The Spy must avoid detection by blending in with the NPCs who inhabit a small room.  Player 2 is the Sniper.  The Sniper’s goal is to kill the Spy (with only one bullet in his gun).

What makes this game interesting from a game design perspective is how effectively it creates tension.  Only with careful mimicry of the AI movement can the Spy hope to achieve victory.  But, the Sniper’s laser dot is visible to the Spy, so he/she knows when the Sniper is analyzing their movement.  The first reaction for the Spy is usually to jerk away, but Spy Party is no twitch shooter.  Such an action will only alert the Sniper to the Spy’s identity, resulting in death.  Staying calm is the key to victory for the Spy.

At PAX, the game seemed very well balanced.  I saw both Snipers and Spies achieve victory.  It’s still in development, but I’d expect Spy Party to win some sort of indie award down the road.

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Game Design: Achievement Unlocked

Aug 22

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How do you keep people playing your game?  Well, you could give it a multiplayer mode.  Or you could add more content through expansions (a lucrative endeavor at times).  Or you could add achievements.  Achievement Unlocked satirizes the achievement phenomena of late with hilarious results.

Achievement Unlocked

Achievement Unlocked

In a broad sense, achievements represent a new way of keeping score in games.  In the past, games like Donkey Kong assigned a number to how good you were at playing.  Today’s games are often too complex to represent skill in a single number, but achievements have filled in the gap.

Achievements are perhaps incomplete as ways of comparing players.  Often, achievements represent how much time a player is willing to invest in a game rather than pure skill.  Still, with both the Xbox, Steam, and the PS3 all using them its hard to argue they aren’t relevant to game design.

All of which is lampooned well in Achievement Unlocked.  In this game, you earn achievements for things like exploring the menu, killing yourself in specific ways, and even just starting the game.

You can play Achievement Unlocked here and its new sequel here.  They are both quite fun, and as a bonus will get you thinking about how achievements are changing the way we play games.

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Game Design: Knytt Stories Tutorial

Aug 16

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What do you do when people don’t know how to play your game?  In the old days they read the instruction manual that came in the box, but there is a better way (although I have fond memories of reading instruction manuals in the car on the way back from Blockbuster).  You make an entertaining tutorial.

Knytt Stories Tutorial

Knytt Stories Tutorial

One particularly good example I’ve found is in the game Knytt Stories.  A player, even if they are not familiar with platformers in general, is given complete instructions on how to play the game in less than five minutes.  In addition, the atmospheric stylings and soothing music native to the Knytt universe are still present.  You have fun while learning.

If your game requires a tutorial, it should be quick and entertaining.  Knytt Stories does both and is a good example to be copied for other independent developers.

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Game Design: This Is How Bees Work

Aug 8

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Not all entertainment software needs to be something you can win while playing.  It doesn’t have to be anything, really.  It just has to be entertaining – fun or relaxing in some way.  At one end of the spectrum you have adrenaline fests like Counterstrike, while at the other end you have This Is How Bees Work.

Bees

Bees

In addition to it being relaxing, I also especially like the controls:  the designers found a good way to move in 3D space by using only the mouse.  Also, the graphics are wonderfully simple and work great for the context.  A very beautiful piece of software.

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Game Design: Wii Sports

Jul 26

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  • Missed last week’s posts – been on travel a lot.  This week I’m moving out to graduate school.

Casual.  The ultimate insult for games?

Wii Sports

Wii Sports

Maybe if you’re 12.  The truth is – games that are easy to pick up and play (especially for non-gamers) are a great boon to the industry.  Anyone who has a Wii and has had family over for Thanksgiving or Christmas knows that Wii Sports is a great example of this type of game.  What other games have you played recently with your grandmother?

Why is it successful?  A couple of reasons.

  • Familiarity.  Most people know how to play bowling or baseball.
  • The control scheme.  This has been covered by lots of people for the past several years – but non-gamers (and many gamers) seem to love motion controls.  It’s intuitive for novices and adds another level of depth for people to enjoy.
  • Simple, customizable graphics.  The Wii avoids the uncanny valley and focuses on humor.

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Game Design: VVVVVV

Jul 12

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Sometimes there are moments in a game when you think the level is impossible but you do it anyway.  Those are great moments for a gamer.  VVVVVV is filled with these moments.

VVVVVV

VVVVVV

VVVVVV takes the ability to jump away from the player.  Instead, you are forced to flip gravity to move vertically in levels filled with danger.  Jumping is so fundamental to platformers that you don’t know what to do without it.  VVVVVV exploits this to great effect.

Not only does VVVVVV have great music and takes the record for most ‘v’’s in a game, it also has very catchy music.  Check out the free demo here.

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Game Design: Galcon

Jul 6

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Like furniture from IKEA, much of the beauty of Galcon comes from its simplicity.  But like all good games, there are layers of depth beneath the surface.

Galcon

Galcon

Galcon is a game of momentum similar to Risk in which the goal is to control the galaxy.  Players send fleets to nearby planets and use these planets to attack even more planets.  The flow of the game is naturally exciting and can be understood by anyone within a few minutes of picking up the game.

In addition to his work on Galcon, the developer Phil Hassey has contributed enormously to the Pygame community.   One of the projects he wrote that I use all the time is PGU (Mr. Frog vs. OSIRIS, LORD OF THE UNDERWORLD uses it for its GUI).  Its great that there are developers out there who not only make fun games but also contribute to the open source movement.

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Game Design: Super Mario Galaxy 2

Jun 28

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Almost everyone who plays games at some point has played a Mario game.  Whether you started older or newer, the Mario games are something of a gold standard for game design.  Why?  What makes them so appealing?

Polish.  Every level is inspired, every animation fluid, and every song on the soundtrack mesmerizing.  The colors are vivid – absent are the browns and grays so common in the graphics of the modern era.  Bugs are also absent.  Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a game you can simply sit back and enjoy.

Mario games are notorious for polish.  The only reason this is possible is because their design teams consistently put the time in to force every moment of the game to be enjoyable.  If every developer put the same amount of effort into their games that Nintendo does, the Museum of Modern Art would have wings dedicated to video games.

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Game Design: Transformice

Jun 21

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Lemmings is a game where you are forced to shepherd dumb rodents through a world filled with dangers.  Transformice takes this concept, but instead of using dumb rodents uses real people.

Transformice

Transformice

This is one of the more fun indie games I’ve played in the past couple of months.  To play, you log into the server and are assigned a small mouse as an avatar.  Your goal is to make it to the cheese.  The problem:  the cheese can only be reached if you work together with the dozens of other mice in your room as well as a more powerful “shaman” mouse.

I’m a fan of multiplayer games because of the unexpected things that can happen in them.  Transformice is a great example of emergent gameplay.  But apart from its cool foundational concept, there are a few other things that I think made it a success:

  • Transformice is a browser based game.  Browser based games have a much easier time of going viral.  Since Transformice only works with a lot of people playing it, it is critical to minimize setup time for the player.
  • Transformice has in game chat.  Without communication, players have a hard time cooperating with each other.
  • Transformice has interesting level design.  One level I enjoyed immensely was very simple:  all of the mice spawn on a seesaw over a cliff.  If too many mice head in one direction over the other, the seesaw collapses.

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Game Design: Cooperative Play in Resident Evil 5

Jun 13

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One of the ways that games are different from other artforms is that they encourage social interaction.  Books and movies may prompt discussion among fans, but never in the same way that a new game will actually cause people to interact with each other in a direct way.  This is a powerful thing:  it is important to use it well.  Resident Evil 5 does several things right to encourage cooperation between players:

Resident Evil 5

Resident Evil 5

  • Boss fights which are made easier with cooperative strategies.  Many of the boss fights in the game are essentially struggles to lure a monster into an area with environmental hazards.  Having one player act as bait makes this much easier.
  • Special challenges requiring players to depend on each another.  In one section of the game, players must navigate a dark tunnel.  Passage is only possible if one player picks up a lantern.  Wielding a lantern means you aren’t holding a gun, so the game forces you to depend on your teammate for survival.
  • Requiring both players to interact with an object for content progression.  There are many doors in RE5 which cannot be opened unless both players interact with them.  This is a relatively small thing, but it ensures that the players don’t get too far ahead of each other.

Of course, if you don’t have any friends the A.I. will gladly do all of the above for you.  But something is missing when you do – the cooperative feel that only comes from multiple human beings trying to solve puzzles together.

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