Expected Gameplay Mechanics Part 1

I have decided to discuss common game play mechanics found throughout games. For the most part, I will be speaking in generalities. I will also be discussing commercial as well as Indie games. The purpose of this post is to discuss familiar gameplay mechanics that most games share and to perhaps avoid some of these cliche mistakes in the future.

 

This most may sound like a bit of a rant, but it stems from a series of recurring themes and gameplay devices that I have noticed in my years of gaming. These things apply to most not all games.

• Collecting Stuff
• Difficulty
• Points
• Boss Fights
• Save Points
• Unlocking Characters in fighting games
• Ninjas, Pirates, Robots, Zombies

Putting Polish on Simple Games

Often the charm of an indie game comes from its simplicity. Not having access to huge teams, and running with the occasional necessity of tapering your vision to your abilities can accent the unique gameplay and style of an indie game. An artist is often the most creative when he is forced to act within strict limits. This is one of the things I love about indie games. I assume it is a fun challenge for our favorite indie developers to try and find ways to use their limited resources to transcend audience expectations.

Unfortunately, too often games fall short due to what I expect is an opposing attitude:  the game doesn’t have to look good or work perfectly, after all it’s just an indie game. Lazy developers sometimes think their audience won’t be bothered by minor flaws because the game was free. But overlooking these things makes a huge difference to gamers like me. Many simple games could’ve been a lot better by (believe it or not) making them even simpler.

Response and Commentary: Pick me!

Besides completing the professed function of this post, I’d like to discuss a few things here that I’ve noticed about the video game blog circle. First of all it’s a circle. Well, more of a ball of yarn, but if you have a really big ball of very fine yarn and you observe a cross-section of the ball then it will appear to look very much like a circle. The name isn’t so important though, what I actually mean to observe is that they really like to link to each other and chat it up in the comment sections.

 

How do we get in on this action? We’ve got street cred. We were Chalktoid. Does one of us have to marry one of your daughters or something? Is there some initiation ritual? Will there be hazing? I’m not sure if I’m comfortable getting paddled in front of the other bloggers.

 

Or (and this brings me to my next point) do I link to all of your blogs so that you notice ours in the list of sites that link to you then, when you arrive, have quality content of our own worth discussing? Diabolical!

 

My second observation is that bloggers rarely post wordy responses to the other articles to which they are linking. I guess that’s what the comment section is for, but I dunno, I like the whole hegemonic “I have a URL, hear me roar” approach to discussion. It reminds me of academic discourse. I call the comments “peer review.” I also call my townhouse “Oxford” and wear tweed jackets as I sit around.

 

Wandering musings aside, I have a few pieces to discuss at great length. Sharp observers will note that all but one of these articles was linked by Level Up within the past two days. This is what prompted my “ball of yarn” diatribe, you see, because I actually found them independently while snaking around the community. It’s a small ball after all.

 

Interview with Nicklas “Nifflas” Nygren – Creator of Knytt Stories and Within a Deep Forest

Anyone who has read just about any one of our posts knows that we’re big Nifflas fans, so it was a great honor when he agreed to be interviewed. I won’t bog you down with a bunch of blah blah blah, since you’re obviously here to see what Nifflas has to say, but it is tempting. I could rant for paragraphs about this; however, I guess I’ll just go with the following.

 

Thank you, Nifflas, for participating, and thank you, visitors, for reading.

 

“It actually took me around 7 years to realize I should keep my projects small.”

 

Nicklas Nygren was born in 1983 in Gävle, Sweden. Today he lives in Umeå, working with the intellectually handicapped at a newspaper. His game portfolio includes Knytt Stories and Within a Deep Forest.

 

You’ve done a wide range of work for your projects, including visual and audio art, besides the general design and engine creation. Is that a result of the difficulty of finding other people or are you just passionate about the entire gamut of game creation? Do you find it easier or more difficult to bring in outsider help as you become more well known?

 

It’s pretty easy to find help as long as you can convince people that you will actually finish your game. The thing is just that I like the graphics and music creation process so much that I want to do a lot of it myself. However, as you can see in the credits list of all my games, I’ve got tons of help as well.

 

About how much time do you spend working through the different aspects of game creation? How much time do you spend, for example, on level design as compared to the visual art?

 

The different aspects are very closely connected to me, when I do all those things in a rather random way. I often create graphics at the same time as designing the level by jumping back and fourth between Photoshop and the level editor. The same goes for music as well. By this reason, it’s quite hard for me to estimate how much time I spend for each thing, but I guess I spend more or less an equal amount of time on each thing.

 

Is there some overarching philosophy you follow when designing games? Something to guide you as you create?

Game Brainstorm: Serendipity

Fairly regularly, we post some simple original ideas in the spirit of sharing and discussion. I just recently noticed that these posts are not immediately distinguishable from games that we simply showcase in the case that a reader is just skimming through the headlines. For that reason, I have decided to just tack on a column name from now on. Game Brainstorm… Lazy, I know…

Riven, one of the main inspirations of this game, featured a world packed with life, history, and significant details.

Serendipity: An exploration platform game with mystery-puzzle gameplay.

In Serendipity, players explore a 2D world which opens up as puzzles are solved and mysteries uncovered. In terms of interface and control, it will function much like Knytt Stories (does this game come up in every one of my posts?), with the exclusion of enemies and death. I choose to take inspiration from this particular game for a number of reasons:

- The focus of Serendipity will be the environment instead of the player character. I haven’t completely decided on whether or not to include other characters at all. I would really like to because I feel that having memorable characters is second only to music in determining the longevity of a game, but it may detract from the mysterious atmosphere I intend to create.

- Players should be able to traverse the world quickly and intuitively.

- A tiny, featureless player character may allow players to project themselves into the game in the same way that a first-person perspective does in other titles, without having to break into 3D.

So much for interface and control; on to the gameplay.

The Indie Gaming Primer

I spend a lot of time searching through lists of recommended indie games seeking out the best, but as many of you may know, the “best of” lists tend to get a bit repetitive. I wanted to make a feature that listed a number of lesser known games that aught to be tried at least once, and I will… But there’s a problem with that idea. I just can’t keep myself from pulling out the A list.

So… this is not that feature. Instead, this is my repetitive list of must-play indie games, designed to liberate my aforementioned list of lesser known games from the influence of these giants.

The premise of this list is as follows: anyone who wants to be able to hold a knowledgeable conversation must be familiar with these games. That’s not so demanding a task as I make it seem, of course. You probably won’t be able to step away from them.

The order in which these games are listed is arbitrary.

Pillow Fortress

This idea came as a collaborative effort between myself and Eric Harm.

Pillow Fortress: A single player fort building simulation with an isometric perspective and simple point-and-click interface.

Goal: To optimize the construction of a fortress based on the available materials within each room.

Challenges: Resources and space are limited and gravity will tend to collapse the constructions.

The premise of Pillow Fortress is that the unnamed playable character’s parents are spending the night out and her older sister is baby-sitting. To celebrate, she’s going to pass down the ancient art of pillow fortress construction. The tutorial for the game would be her first lessons.

In Pillow Fortress, players are presented with two gameplay options: free play and challenge. Free play is self explanatory. In challenge mode, each level is presented with a certain goal. A few examples could be:

• Build a fort that can hold three people sitting
• Build a fort that can hold two people laying down
• Build a fort that can support two heavy pillows
• Build a tunnel from an existing fort to the kitchen
• Remove and replace dad’s favorite chair without knocking down the fort

User and Procedurally Generated Content

While we are on the subject of content creation I thought I would talk about this…

This post is mostly a discussion of theory. Editors and Procedurally generated content can be very difficult to make. Especially when under the limitation of some game engines and creators.

We are past the days where designers are forced to provide players with large amounts of content which add replay value to their games. As a matter of fact, by providing players with procedurally generated content or editing tools for their respective games, players theoretically have the ability to create an almost infinite amount of content. Being limited by only your imagination and ambition, players are now able to create very imaginative and challenging levels which the original designers of the game may have never thought of.

Since most indie teams are small and have limited resources these level editors provide a great way to add life to their games. Small communities in which fans share and trade content are growing at a rapid rate. Indie games on the PC are unique in regards to the fact that the games and additional content is easily distributed, talked about (forums) and patched. Some games are even open source like Knytt Stories (we love Nifflas here) and NetHack which spawned a large amount of mods, remakes and levels.

Mods are on a slightly different level than added content such as levels. My definition of mods involve actually editing the game source code or project files to change or evolve the game. I won’t be discussing mods today but I will address the issue later.

Knytt Stories Level Editor

Nifflas is a brilliant level designer. While others have noted the influence he’s drawn from Metroid, the experience for me is far more reminiscent of Riven: the Sequel to Myst. While Within a Deep Forest depended more heavily on skill than anything in the Knytt collection, both offer intricate worlds to explore and learn, which start off unknowably vast and actually seem to shrink as new areas open up. The confusing collections of boundaries and obstacles steadily transform from distractions into landmarks as the player expands the arsenal of abilities and brings each image into perspective.

It’s because of this brilliance that I’m confused about the inclusion of a level editor in the release. The effort is, of course, appreciated, but I’m quite apprehensive. With no abilities available in the editor that do not already appear in the pack-in adventure, The Machine, there is little to do besides alter the audio-visual style and craft a new Knytt world; however, the custom worlds (even the official ones) come across as remixes of the original adventure more than anything else.

Puzzle Scramble

Puzzle Scrambler

Here’s a quick one…
I have always been a fan of procedurally generated content; Diablo, Nethack, Dwarf Fortress. This idea is simple: to construct a procedurally generated puzzle game which constantly evolves and challenges the player.The puzzles will be simple, generated by predetermined algorithms. Some of the puzzles could be as simple as figuring out the next number in a sequence, to analyzing patterns in shapes. The objective would be to navigate through the maze of puzzles as quickly as possible. Each sequential level will include more puzzles, timers, harder puzzles and more variety.

Graphics:
I am thinking that by having this game text only would add more of a hardcore puzzle feel to it. Graphics would perhaps detract from the game play. Navigating menus through text and typing answers manually would give it sort of a “hacker feel.” Perhaps the story could include something of that connotation.

If you haven’t noticed this game is semi-inspired by Professor Layton and would be playing in a similar way.

Here are some examples of sequence puzzles that I had in mind.

http://www.puzz.com/lloydkingpuzzles.html
http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/Spuzzle.html
http://brainden.com/number-puzzles.htm