More words on Rosvita’s direction change
If you have paid a visit over to rosvita-game.tumblr.com you might have noticed that big changes have happened with Rosvita. Huge changes, like American meal portions size changes.
Today Rosvita is, to a lesser or greater extent, a different game.
What, how, why, when? All good questions I’ve recorded a video on the subject which will give some context but I will go into more depth below.
The new set of mechanics are focused on smoothing out the player experience with Rosvita. Whilst the line slicing was unique it’s use from the player’s point of view was fraught with problems.
(the old line slicing mechanic in action)
It very quickly became convoluted for the player to adequately place and manipulate lines in order to solve puzzles, especially when paired with the kind of movement and free interaction we wanted to player to have with the world as they solved puzzles. In short, we had two sets of mechanics at odds with each other. This is pretty much exactly what Alexis Garavaryan had said to us and something we as a team had been politely ignoring this entire time.
(as you can see in the above video, using the slices requires the player to completely stop and focus on the slicing mechanics, this creates friction in the experience.)
The original design for the game was a mobile focused puzzle game in the style of The Incredible Machine or The Amazing Alex. You had no control over Rosvita directly, instead you created your slices and reality segments and hit the play button and watched Rosvita automatically run through your reality warping Rube Goldberg machine to success or failure at the far end.
(an example of the triggers we were using to facilitate this automated movement.)
But as the project progressed new considerations came to light:
First we shifted our target platform, mobile gaming has become an incredibly toxic environment to release your first game, especially one which would require as large an investment of our time and effort as Rosvita. So now we are focusing our efforts to PC and then console. From what we have discussed with other devs and industry professionals these markets are less saturated (though far from virgin grounds,) and a lot more forgiving for first time developers.
Secondly we had to think about the type of experience we wanted the player to have. We want them to engage with a deep story, connect with the character and revel in their exploration and discovery of a meticulously rendered fantastic world. A fire and forget mobile game would not suit these aims as they divorce the player from this kind of connection.
With these things in mind it seems obvious now that our core concept wasn’t going to fit but when you are knee deep in development it is hard to see the wood for the trees and instead we kept hammering away at that square peg trying to work itself into a round hole, tweaking bits here and there in the hope that eventually everything would click into place and the game would suddenly become fun.
A clear lesson we learned from this painful process was this; If no amount of adjustments fixes the problem, you have a fundamental issue which you must address first.
If we couldn’t marry our slice mechanic with what we wanted to achieve in the game experience the slicing mechanic had to go!
In it’s place we have a reality changing system that is more rooted in Rosvita herself. Before we had disembodied slicing, now we have a projectile fired by the player that creates an area of effect when detonated.
(The new mechanic in action, we quickly realised that the bubbles could affect the projectiles too. This illustrates how much of a boost to our creativity this change was)
Whilst this gives the player far less versatility it does ground them in the world. In turn the restricted control offers them a lot more clarity in solving puzzles.
Have you ever been to a shop to buy a snack or a game or something only to find yourself overwhelmed by the amount of choice you have? You are paralysed with indecision as your brain tries to calculated the optimal decision to satisfy your munchies or alleviate your boredom.
The same can be true of games. Rosvita’s slicing mechanic was too granular, it allowed for a ton of scope in solving puzzles, too much in fact. When solving a puzzle the player was presented with a blank canvas and told to go at it, this is a recipe for frustration. Good puzzle design allows the player to express their own intelligence and ingenuity by providing the tools to facilitate and guide them. Obfuscation is not good puzzle design!
Bringing the mechanics back down to earth and focusing them on Rosvita’s physical interaction with the world provides a better framework for the player’s intelligence to shine!
With the focus now placed squarely back on Rosvita it feels more natural to have direct control over her movements. There are no longer two competing mechanics vying for the player’s attention and so the overall experience is finally cohesive.
(The interaction is a lot more straight forward now)
The final reason this change is an important and difficult lesson for me. These changes bring the game in line with other titles, our colleagues and competitors.
This took a great deal of effort on my part to come to terms with. As creators we want our game to be unique, it’s only natural. We want to break new ground, we want to explore new ideas, we want to stand out! But uniqueness for uniqueness’ sake can be toxic to creativity. If your clever unique aspect is compromising the whole project then you have to be brutally honest about its inclusion.
In Rosvita the slicing was problematically unique. Perhaps it could work in the aforementioned mobile game but for the experience we’re creating we need something instantly familiar for the player to latch onto but also something more wieldy for us as developers.
There is no shame in this. By removing one unique thing we are able to bolster other unique aspects of our game by offering a sort of scaffolding of tried and tested mechanics on which our more nuanced mechanics can hang.
This mirrors our desired experience for the players. I stated before that being presented with a blank canvas obfuscates the puzzle for the player and will frustrate them as they stab blindly into the dark. By trying to apply our intelligence and creativity to a more structured setting we are able to make the game so much more than it would be otherwise.
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