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Monster Boy, Monster Work
A little post to declare that blog’s not dead!
I’m working hard since 1 year and a couple of months on Monster Boy And The Cursed Kingdom, the successor of the Wonder Boy Series.
The game is currently in development, so if you want more details of just to follow the project, here are some links:
Dev’ Blog
Cheers!
A game made with cool guys in a less than 72h for the LudumDare(#35). The theme was “shapeshift” and it inspired us a strange mix between Kuru Kuru Kururin and the art of Cartoon Saloon - especially The Secret of Kells.
The game is a bit difficult in its jam entry form, but we work on it.
Enjoy!
Play the game – it’s free.
LudumDare page.
Experience In Videogames
Game Mechanics
In terms of game mechanics, Flower is just a snake game in 3D without any defeat condition...
Game Experience
However, its experience makes you embody the wind as the redeemer of mankind’s actions on nature.
A good experience is the first key to player’s happiness!
A little post to show a little game I worked on during the last LudumDare (#34).
Play the game – it’s free.
LudumDare page.
Enjoy!
Some Words About Gone Home
As August is the perfect moment to relax – or not – I took the opportunity to play some videogames I couldn’t test by past. Gone Home is one of them, because of its very favorable critics and my desire to play an exploration game at this very precise moment. So I played it… and I finished it... And I damned love it!
The following lines are a quick explanation of my thoughts about this game – Beware of SPOILERS.
Above: Gone Home Title.
A little summary
Here is a little reminder of what the game is:
The scene takes place in the 90’s, in a GIANT house – maybe not so much, but I live in a small apartment so my perspective is slightly falsified. The player embodies Katie Greenbriar who just came back from a long travel in Europe to see her family. Unfortunately, nobody’s here.
The goal is simple: exploring that house to know what’s going on. It’s possible to interact with a lot of objects in order to examine or take them and understand the whole thing through a well-designed environment storytelling. And that’s all for the gameplay in terms of pure mechanics. It doesn’t give many controls to remember or complex puzzles to solve. Some people could also argue it’s not really a “game” in its strict definition, and they wouldn’t be wrong. However, like a good storytelling experience, the magic is hidden in more little details.
Above: manipulating an object.
Atmosphere vs Reality
I think Gone Home is a great experience because of the way it gives us its message. Understanding that needs to compare the atmosphere inside the game and the facts – the story – told in it.
Firstly, the atmosphere. Outside, the wind roars in a thunderstorm throwing bolts in a regular pace. The atmosphere, technically well rendered, sends the player directly back in the 90’s through photos showing the character embodied, Katie but also the rest of the family Greenbriar: Katie’s mother, father and young sister. During almost 3 hours, the player evolves in dark places we all know from our childhood, like a lounge, a kitchen, bedrooms or a basement. It’s an odd mix between nostalgia – when we have lived during the 90’s – and anxiety to find someone dead, a ghost or whatever worst.
Above: a dark place.
In a nutshell, the atmosphere gives the sensation something horrible happened somewhere.
Secondly comes the story. It’s told through objects, documents, observation. By exploring that house, the player learns some hardcore family secrets about all its members. The mother and father have important things to hide, but not as important as Katie’s sister one. The game orients our fears directly on the sister because she keeps it hidden pretty efficiently.
And I deeply think sister’s secret, when combined with the atmosphere and storytelling described above, is the successful key of the game experience. Indeed – and here comes the SPOIL: the end of the game lets us understand Katie’s sister is gay. A secret that made her go with her love, far from her family.
That’s all... No astonished reveal nor some cliffhanger that could let us imagine another episode. Nothing but that, which deserves a little analysis.
Above: the Greenbriar family.
To be honest, I was disappointed first. I explored the house during 3 hours, waiting for something that never happened. The game experience creates a BIG teaser, playing with our (im)patience to know the truth. A truth hard to believe because of the reality implicitly hidden in it:
Everything is perfectly normal.
That sentence above is quite representative of why the game is a success for me. Katie’s sister is just gay, nothing supernatural nor monstrous. In the end, I was just happy for the sister and sad not being able to see her for real, but not afraid of something that just looks like a choice. Is it the good one? Maybe, maybe not. Judging is here player’s final task, depending on the evidences he found exploring the house, but also depending on player’s sensibility. Personally, it was the first time an experience presented me its message/morality that way.
Brilliant!
A C++ Management Project
Another project I made during my studies. Less Game Design, but more programming here with a Transport Tycoon-like directly derived from Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe, a free copy you can find on the internet.
We were 6 on the project during 6 weeks. We had to write the code in C++, and we could use the SFML API to have a bunch of methods to render 2D quickly. However, we had no engine, so it was crucial to build it while making the game regarding the time allowed. We also had to use the Squirrel scripting language to craft the gameplay, while the program should take all the graphical resources from a dedicated server. Last but not least, the program had to handle multi-threading, but we missed this part because of time.
Personally, I worked on the resource system – Textures and Fonts – plus the implementation of the animations and the GUI. I also dealt with all the JSON config files to iterate more quickly.
Even if the final version isn’t balanced enough to feel fun on a mid-term time, the result for a demo is pretty cool. I let you check the gameplay video right below.
Note: To watch it in fullscreen, you should click on the “Youtube” button on the right side of the video player.
Die to Stay Alive: A Student Project
One of the best and ambitious video game I worked on was Die to stay Alive, my final project as student – made by 4 Game Designers, 3 Artists and 1 Sound Designer. It was a good exercise because beyond its concept and qualities, it taught me important tips about pure development and team working. This post is kind of a post-mortem.
The concept
Here is a description I’m getting used to give for talking about it:
In a 2D Puzzle/Platformer, you control alternately a bunch of monkeys enclosed in a complex, directed by an evil scientist, to serve as guinea pigs. Your objective: escape to recover freedom. But to do this, you have to sacrifice each monkey cleverly to create a path to the exit. However, be careful to not sacrifice all your stock of lives if you don’t want guide your people toward extinction.
As showing things is always more efficient than describing them, here is a visual translation:
Above: the prototype trailer, with some tutorial features missing.
Summarizing the video content, the player can sacrifice each monkey from his/her stock and use the dead body with his/her next life to be able to solve puzzles. In order to do that, there are two possibilities:
Firstly, the player can press a dedicated button so the current monkey dies, transforming himself into a block – you don’t think that’s very affording? Neither do I, but I’ll develop that part much below on this post. Of course, the player loses a life point but can use this block to solve all or a part of a puzzle.
Above: a character transforming himslef into a dead block.
Secondly, the player can execute a kamikaze action choosing a well-placed trap on the game field. If the trap hits the player – for instance, a hammer smashing the avatar – the living monkey transforms himself temporarily into another character with new powers. Why temporarily? Simply because after a while, the monkey dies staying on the field just as if the player would have used the ‘sacrifice button’ described above. If we reuse the example of the hammer trap smashing a living monkey, this monkey would become flat like a pancake, so he would be able to use ventilators to fly! Our basic intention was to create some famous traps we all have seen as children – hammers, flamethrowers, etc. in order to get affordable features to use for solving mad puzzles.
Above: a character becoming flat, with one usable situation.
Above: a flat character dying slowly. Cruel, isn’t it?
The concept really excited us – it was in 2011. As a matter of fact, I encourage you to test the prototype before reading the next part! Please note that as we developed it on a very old engine named Virtools, you must be on Windows to be able to install the plugin. You can also download the standalone version on this page if there is any problem while installing the plugin.
Good Points
There are several good points offered by such a concept:
Gameplay diversity increases well by adding one trap/transformation. In fact, as we can design a level with the traps we want, every single trap/transformation can be combined with another one, letting us create fun and diversified patterns.
The big content created that inherits from the good point above. In fact, the possibility to design a lot of game patterns also let us creating a lot of levels.
The replay value is important as there isn't a unique way to finish each level.
Sensation while playing is cool! We spent a certain amount of time polishing that detail, because embodying a flat monkey isn't the same as embodying a flamed monkey running fast!
The “Merrie Melodies” inspiration used for designing traps is very affording for the player as he quickly understand the traps, the abilities offered, the risks, etc.
It represents another way of seeing a puzzle/platformer game. In fact, there are traps and abilities known from every player because already used in another game. However, as we tried to use them differently, we were able to create some surprises.
Thanks to the level design, a trap can be as useful as dangerous, making the player hesitate. It’s good for both physical and mental skills, so it’s good the game!
Bad Points
Of course, we learnt a lot about the mistakes we did on this project. There are two of them I really want to talk about:
The art direction.
The level design structure.
The art direction puts in relief several design mistakes about the game.
First of all, the ethical problem. In fact, killing monkeys can be disturbing for some players, and it’s not something matching our first willing of creating a game playable by all core gamers. It’s also a problem while knowing that at the beginning, the concept was to embody a bunch of crash-test robots. Finally, monkeys are cool in their design, but not as affording as crash-test robots created to be destroyed. I really think they would have fit better the initial concept.
Above: the final design of the monkeys.
The art direction puts in relief another problem centered on the level design this time: player’s spatial awareness. In fact, all the levels were artistically designed as if the player would explore them, like in a platform-adventure game. Nonetheless, we wanted to get a puzzle-platform game, and this type of game often needs a purified dress code. As a result, we figured out that some players thought some parts of a level were interactive while they only were decorative.
Last but not least, there is currently a gap between the visual and the function. Some design assets didn't match their function at all. The better example would be the "monkey spawn” below:
Above: on the left on the screenshot, the evil monkey spawn. On the right, a hammer trap.
Its design is cool, but can’t match its function as it looks dangerous with deadly peaks all around the metallic structure! I think it’s representative of the difference of vision the artists and game designers had on this project – and why cohesion is crucial!
In this tornado of criticism, artists are not alone. We made errors in level design that impact the game experience quite much. Here is the main problem we encountered in terms of architecture:
Above: you can’t read the scheme? It’s normal, the level is too long!
Every level is too long. In fact, each one includes several puzzles to complete before reaching the exit. That structure enters directly in conflict with the defeat condition: if player’s stock of lives reaches 0, he/she has to retry the level from the beginning. As we designed a puzzle game before a platformer one, the player wants to test different solutions, making errors to find the “eureka!” moment. Unfortunately, it’s frustrating to be obliged to retry parts we have already finished because the architecture doesn't fit an elementary rule! Here is a correction I made on the scheme above:
Above: the same level with some important cuts.
By using the experience we had with playtests, I can now consider one level can’t be longer than what you see on this draw. It’s approximately 1/3 of the level we put in the prototype, and it represents more a macro puzzle than a long level to explore, as ‘Splosion Man or the last Donkey Kong could give as game experience.
Conclusion
Die to stay Alive is a cool prototype, and I took a great pleasure developing it with my friends. Even if there are a lot of problems in the delivered experience, it has the potential for creating mad and affording puzzles if we take time to fix its rookie mistakes.
The rendering of this 3D animated short movie is damned cool! It reminds me Disney/Pixar pre-production works, with kinda vectorial-watercolor style.
Plus, characters look as deformed as the bunch met in Tim Schafer’s game. I definitely want to see such a rendering in an adventure video game!
A stunning “trailer-style” short film made by one French student in animation.
Cocorico!
To end up with From Legend, here is a little presentation of the game. It was style in development, so many things are missing, some other weren't definitive, but you can see the game in movement.
I hope someday I will have the opportunity to work on the license anew, or another one similar – like Hideki Kamiya with The Wonderful 101 – because I have a lot of ideas to develop!
By the way, you should take a look at Louis Lim's arts, the Art Director with whom I worked at Egg Ball. All the visuals you can see above and from other posts come from his direction!
From Legend at Gameblog.
From Legend: Inspirations from Everywhere
It is generally stated that every good game can inspire other games. The very cool thing is that as games are composed by different branches – gameplay, story, art, sound, programming, etc. – a lot of sources can model the game experience.
Designing From Legend was interesting, because it asked for several different and interesting sources.
Emotional Experience
Here are some references for the world created and the story:
Pu Songling's tales are the first source of inspiration we could count on. His book Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (1740) tells several little stories about how seductive fox-women learn to smart boys to question themselves about their knowledge.
The King of Masks (1996) is a movie directed by Wu Tianming. It tells a story about a Sichuan Change Art master who has to accept that the child he has adopted is a girl. The sex discrimination subject tackled through Chinese tradition was a good reference to find Fulin's story. Another reference for us with a different style was the famous Disney’s Mulan!
A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) is a Hong Kong movie directed by Ching Stiu-Tung. It's also quite inspired by Pu Songling's Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio and was a good reference for its direction: cool fights with fireballs, amazing dodges and a lot of asian culture in one shot!
Interactive Experience
Oboro Muramasa is a nervous zone-type Action-RPG created by Vanillaware. It was our main reference in terms of action, arts and effects. It was also a good reference because of the input limitations from the Wii Controller that we had with tactile devices – OK, it's completely different, but there was control limitations on both devices, so we thought it was an interesting case.
Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep (2010) is an Action-RPG created by Square Enix and first released on PSP systems. It was a good reference for us because it has a 'command gauge' that can be filled by hitting the enemies, changing player's attacks when full. As God Hand (2005) created by Clover Studio, it proves it is possible to create diversity with only one action button!
The Binding of Isaac (2010) created by Team Meat was a cool reference in terms of game structure, because it can generate diversity each game played. Unfortunately, we realized that it was incompatible with the Achievement system – at least if we would have designed something as deep as Team Meat's game. In fact, the Achievement system asks for achievable objectives, which is hard to balance with randomness. Finally, we kept a random effect for the environments and other bonus, but not to compose every fight. Maybe it was possible, but we hadn't the time to integrate it well enough to get the game experience we wanted.
Games from Platinum Games – Bayonetta and most of all Vanquish – were good references because the studio is getting used to create bosses the player encounters several times. With time and experience, they found a balance to make every fight unique despite reusing the same skin: a complex boss is designed, then limited in his behavior so each confrontation is a good opportunity to unlock some patterns to make it more complex – it's better than duplicate the boss to create something harder!
One thing we absolutely wanted was to often use the attack button, because it let us remind the most important command regularly. One of the numerous ideas was to fight during the reward sequence: depending on the fight result, more or less little lamps appear on screen. Each one contains money and can be broken easily with some basic attacks. If the score is perfect, a bigger lamp appear at the center of the screen, giving a chance to drop a magic gate that throws the player in a bonus stage. The main reference was double: Chinese Lamps + Pinata! Even if we hadn't the time to polish it enough to integrate it into the demo, I think such a system could be fun because it lets the player being active, even during the last part of the gameplay loop: the reward sequence.
The last reference I want to talk about is Disney's Beauty and the Beast. At first sight, there isn't common point, but as I liked the idea of living objects from Disney's movie, I suggested the possibility to have living chests in the bonus rooms I described right above. Bonus rooms have always a fixed camera and a random generated content: players can encounter enemies, money, a chest or nothing. This chest has also a random behavior: if the player gives a hit, the chest can stay still, running from the left to right or start to fly. With a few skills, the player can break it to get a cool reward. Unfortunately, like written in the paragraph above, this part was not polish enough to be implemented in the demo.
Conclusion
I think it's important to be able to get references from every media if it can help to create better games. The better way to get profit from that technique is simple: be curious and always search for the information – maybe the coolest side of our hyper-connected world!
From Legend: Story of a Fragile Fox-Woman
When starting this beat'em all project, the purpose was to create “a game about Chinese legends”. We thought it was a good point to make a fighting game – we really wanted to – so we started making benchmarks and reading many things about China and Chinese traditions. We even saw an expert from a university in Paris to get more precision about the potential elements we were going to add into the game experience.
As the storytelling had an important part in the emotional experience we wanted to offer, we decided to design it at the same time as the structure and the gameplay. Unfortunately, our ambition was too big, so we changed it two times before getting something possible to achieve. I had already written a bit about the game structure and the gameplay in previous posts, so I'm going to talk about the story now!
Above: early concept of the 3 main characters of the game.
The story
Here is a summary of the story:
A legend from an Eastern kingdom tells the story of the fox-woman Fulin...
In a far away land is a sacred sanctuary which hides the mystical and powerful art of masks. This place is watched by Ling, a High Dragon sent by the Celestial Jade Emperor in order to regulate the population on Earth. However, Ling is a proud deity who gets used to show his powers to enslave whoever approaches his lair. He's also a formidable creator and is considered as the god of the art of masks, a.martial art which draws its power from a mix between kung-fu and supernatural masks to wear.
One day, a young fox-woman named Fulin is searching for an audience with the terrible Ling. She is a warrior who has mastered the art of masks, the one created by the Dragon god she considers as an apart member of her family. While arriving at the sacred place, she meets Pi An, a talkative guardian dog who informs her he knows where his master is waiting for. Faithfully accompanied by her doggy guardian, Fulin must go through the twelves districts of the sanctuary to reach the god of her art, obliged to defeat all the enemies standing on her way. In fact, the High Dragon has transformed and enslaved a lot of thieves, warriors and kings into dangerous guardians through decades.
Once arrived in front of the lair of the High Dragon, Fulin says Pi An she's on saving him. The big dog doesn't understand the sens of her words, but in reality, he's just a puppet like all the other pawns of the sanctuary. In fact, Pi An is Fulin's fiancé, enslaved by Ling for having tried to steal a precious bracelet as a gift for his wedding with the fox-woman. When Fulin faces her god once again, he tells her that if she fails, Pi An will forget all about Fulin and their common story, as well as their meeting, throwing her back to the entry of the sanctuary.
The fate is in player's end. The end of the story depends on the issue of this fight and the achievements performed.
Above: concept illustrating the face to face between Fulin and Ling.
Storytelling and Evolution
As the game structure lets the player resolve fights before facing the big dragon boss and loop on that scheme – cf. this dedicated post – the storytelling has been designed through that constraint. The fundamental question we had at the very beginning of the development was to know what point of view the player would have: an omniscient one, a point of view relative to a specific character or something different? In other words, we had to define if the player would discover all the events of the game at the same time as the character embodied, or if he/she would be “outside” the world of the game, being awarded of some details characters might not know yet and vice versa. We chose the second option because we wanted to get a global experience that could remind Chinese tales: the narrator knows every detail and give them bit by bit to the reader. Another cool thing with these stories is that every tale can take place in one or several environments and generations, which is quite appropriate for the story we wanted to tell and the emotions we wanted to offer to the player.
Here was our storytelling concept:
At the very beginning, when introducing the characters, the player has compassion for Pi An. He's clumsy, funny and often gives cool gameplay tips to help the player well starting the adventure. As a contrary, Fulin is not very talkative, hiding her true motivation for wanting to beat her god. Even if she's strong at fighting bunch of enemies, it's hard to have compassion for her. At this point, the player would have much more affection for Pi An than for the main character.
While the player increases the progression gauge, the story evolves just as the enemies encountered and the achievements to perform – new cut-scenes between fights. At a certain point, he/she learns why Fulin wants absolutely to defeat the Dragon: Pi An is Fulin’s fiancé, cursed and enslaved by the High Dragon. She doesn't remember for how many years she’s trying to save him, failing better at every attempt to reach her goal, just like the player. The dialogues between Fulin and Pi An turn more centered on their past, and show more fragile facets of the character embodied by the player, so he/she can now have affection for her.
Once the player beats the Dragon, two endings are possible: an uncompleted one which triggers if the player hasn’t performed all the achievements, and a final one which triggers if all the achievements are done and the Dragon beat once again – with a slightly different and harder behavior, of course!
Above: early concept illustrating both Fulin’s power and decision.
Conclusion
Even if we hadn't the time to implement the story into the demo, I think it would have deserved a try. Its non-linear structure and how it could be linked to the concept of the game let me trust in it.
The next post would be the last but one about From Legend.
Stay tuned!
From Legend: Achievements & Progression
When thinking about the HD generation – PS3/Xbox 360 – there is one thing that has changed in our way of playing: the possibility to fill ‘micro-goal’ checklists to satisfy a killer/achiever appetite. For Microsoft, you perform achievements and earn points for a gamer score that allows you to compare it with other players. For Sony, you earn trophies with different values – which is actually the same thing as its rival’s system. There are two common point between them:
They are not compulsory. In fact, you can finish a game without performing all the achievements/earning all the trophies.
They offer nothing but auto-satisfaction. No bonus reward for performing all of them, whatever the game.
The main paradigm we chose in From Legend was to make the player feel perseverance, so performing achievements was the perfect idea, because anybody can understand – and accept – them. All the challenge was to get the addiction brought by their mechanics and then mixing it with a system solid enough to keep player’s focus during the entire game.
Here is the system as originally designed.
Achievements as a way to progress
As it has been indicated in a previous post, each time Fulin – player's character – performs an achievement, she moves forward on a 'progress gauge'. When a segment of that gauge is full, she earns a level and multiple rewards:
A big one that increases player's powers – max life increased, equipment bigger, new abilities through masks, etc.
Several small ones that make grow up the world Fulin evolves into – a new enemy, a new environment, a new mini-boss, a new event, a progression of the story, etc.
This system has been chosen to fit the 'looping structure' creating juicy new things as often as possible.
Above: A fake screen showing the progress gauge – not final visual.
Performance and effects on the player
Regarding the mask system – cf. previous post – it was important to introduce both 'physic skill' and 'mental skill' challenges. Regarding the game structure and the macro gameplay loop, it was also important that achievements were a lot more challenging one-shot objectives than a repetitive task such as killing 250 enemies or jumping 1000 times. In fact, as they represent here the main objectives of the game, it’s fundamental that they give challenging moments for the player to live.
To perform achievements, the process for is always the same:
1. Taking a look at the mission. Here the player can see 3 achievements to perform and choose the one he/she wants to do. Once one of them is done, it's checked and will be validated the next chapter.
2. Setting up the better combination of masks.The player equips different masks (cf. system) to maximize the chances of success.
Above: some schemes showing a part of the achievement performing process.
Above: A fake screen illustrating these schemes. Blue and red on the icons are inverted, but it lets you see the organization with some colors.
At this point, all the challenge is pure mental skill. The player takes first the information from the achievement description and takes the information for all the masks he has in order to make a choice between all of them, elaborating a tactics. All the difficulty in terms of design was to make a clear description of each achievement and masks to make feel the player he/she's smart instead of it's perfectly logic.
3. The last step is the physical performance. If choosing the right combination of mask is a mental skill of tactics, the physical performance is a mix of timing and reflex – measurement wasn't sure because of tactile controls.
Above: an ideal fight to perform achievements.
There wasn't a balancing between physic and mental skills. Some of the achievements were more based on mental skills, other on physical skills and some of them were 50/50. We hadn't well organized the list of achievements yet, but the concept was here.
Success or Fail?
The achievements were a hard part to design – we clearly didn't finish it. The inherent problem with them was we had to set first the difficulty for the fight itself, like for every beat'em all game, and then adding achievements that could fit the primary difficulty. Of course, we tried to design battles based on the achievements we wanted, because they represented the core experience of the game. However, as we couldn't finish this part before the company died, I can’t say it was a success nor a fail, but I think it was maybe a little bit too much ambitious regarding the situation of the company – number of resources, experience in a beat’em all games, tools, etc...
The next post will be about the story of the game, a cool part about demons, fox-women and love!
Stay tuned!
From Legend: Fight, Masks and Other Things
In the first post, I treat about perseverance and achievements that help the player to defeat a powerful boss. In this one, I want to define the gameplay more precisely, from the 3C’s – Character’s abilities, Controls and Camera – to the game system, so the next post will be clearer. Here we go!
3C’s: Character, Controls and Camera
As mentioned in the previous post, the player embodies a millenary fox-woman named Fulin in a 2D beat’em all game. She can move on the left and right, perform a 4 hit combo using her fans and rise in the air with bunches of enemies by executing an uppercut. In addition, she can dodge dangerous attacks by pressing a directional button two times.
Above: a fake screen to illustrate the controls on iPhone 4.
Above: S= 'Simple Attack' ; H= 'Heavy Attack' and Proj.= a hit that send the enemy away. The player can perform a 1, 2, 3 or 4 hit combo by pressing the 'Simple Attack' button the necessary number of times.
Concerning the camera, we had to focus on one important detail: to create vertical or horizontal battles. As the player has to use his left and right thumb, we decided that the horizontal scrolling would be better. Aftermath: the arenas are wide but not very high. The camera keeps Fulin at the center of the screen on the floor and in the air so the player can feel he’s surrounded by waves of enemies coming from the left and right of the game area.
Above: the camera during a fight (character on the floor). The virtual buttons are under the floor to avoid visibility problems.
Above: the camera during a fight (character in the air). It blocks at 50% so the player can always see the enemies on floor.
Game System: a story about masks
I have to admit the 3C’s aren’t revolutionaries. It’s normal, we wanted them robust before totally new, because we figured out that on mobile support – especially on tactile devices like iOS, Android and Windows 8 – a large part of beat’em all doesn’t give a good first impression because of bad controls, camera or abilities. To limit these problems was our first priority. The second one was to find a system that could make the player feel challenge and perseverance, and that’s why the main character wears multiple masks. In fact, like masters of masks from China, Fulin can rapidly change the mask on her face. The difference is that masks have powers and are useful during battles in this game.
Their functionning is quite simple:
Every mask gives one new ability.
When the player changes the mask Fulin is wearing, he changes his bonus ability.
Abilities are essential to perform achievements – we didn’t lose our target!
Nevertheless, we figured out a first problem: how can we change the mask without adding a new button on the user interface? In fact, we didn’t want more than 4 action button – move ones included – while we absolutely wanted them with a large effect zone and integrated into the floor, so the player couldn’t hide enemies with his thumb during fights. To resolve the problem, we created a central ‘mask gauge’ filling everytime the player hits the enemies on the screen. When it’s full, the main character changes the mask she wears. Of course, with that system the player has to define the masks to wear before fighting. As we thought it could add more strategy to achievements, we adopted that solution.
Above: scheme showing how to equip masks before fights.
Above: scheme showing how the 'mask gauge' works.
However, another new problem emerged. In fact, we had to include a lot of masks in the game to get enough content, so creating only masks that could change player’s abilities was too big. To find a viable solution, we decided to add types to the masks, based on the yin-yang paradigm. Here is a little booklet:
Yin type: its power is active once it's worn and continues until the fight ends. Every mask of this type add a support ability that can be stacked. For instance, if the player put as first mask 'Panda' which gives the passive ability 'impossible to be thrown away or interrupted by an enemy attack' and put as a second mask 'Gorilla' which gives the ability: '1 life heart added to the life gauge', the player will keep the 'Panda' ability while wearing 'Gorilla'. This rule goes even for the masks worn after.
Yang type: its power is active when it's worn only. It modifies directly character's abilities. For instance: the mask 'Tiger' gives the active ability 'punches are heavier and stronger', which means that the main combo is replaced by another one slower but doing more damages. If the player put another mask during a fight, he will lose the ability so will retrieve the classic main combo.
Divine type: Uncommon type that gives a special power but prevents the player from wearing another type. For instance, the mask 'Super Mustache' gives the ability 'every successful uppercut adds +5 coins'. Thanks Mario!
Above: a recapitulative scheme about masks types.
Of course, the representation above isn't exactly what can be seen in the game:
We used blue/red icons to illustrate respectively passive/active attacks.
We have choosen simple drawings to let the player learn abilities efficiently.
Above: some icons representing masks in the game.
The final touch
One last thing to know about the game system: the frenzy attribute. When the player’s 'combo hits' is superior (>) to a certain number, every hit has x% chance to be twice powerful – it deals +100% damages, so we can call that a 'critical hit'!
Above: the 'frenzy system' in one scheme.
That's all for the second part. The next post will be about achievements and how it uses the mask system to generate challenge and fun.
Stay tuned!
From Legend: Concept and Intentions
Here is the starting point of a long series of posts about the last project I worked on: From Legend, a 2D beat’em all game taking action in Ancient China. In this first post, I want to talk about the concept of the game that has already been revealed in a previous post – giving more details, of course.
Above: a concept art of the main character Fulin, by Louis Lim.
Our intention was:
To create a mobile beat’em all – iOS, Android, Windows 8 but also PS Vita and more – playable everywhere and by both casual and core gamers.
To get a frenetic gameplay easy to play but difficult to master.
To get a game experience that mixes game mechanics and scenario together in order to create strong emotions.
The player embodies Fulin, a thousand-year-old fox-woman who has mastered the art of masks. It’s a martial art which consists in changing the style of fight as the fighter changes his face. The goal: to cross a dangerous sanctuary to reach Ling, Fulin’s dragon-god, in order to get back what he has stolen to her.
The choice of China wasn’t a random selection. In fact, we wanted a game experience that could allow the player to experiment hardcore perseverance. Yes, perseverance was the most fundamental word of the project, so all the aspects of the game – structure, core gameplay, story and arts – had to fit its meaning perfectly. To unify these aspects, we used a concept known and overwhelming accepted by the players: achievements. In fact, to succeed in performing achievements, the player usually has to repeat normal actions in a game for a long time – to kill 1,000 enemies – or to perform a very hard action during the game – to discover a well hidden secret for instance. Since Microsoft introduced this concept with the Xbox 360, all the industry has adopted it – Nintendo is still an exception! Whatever the case, it takes time so the most perseverant people can unlock all of them in a game. However, they’re not an obligation. Players who don’t want to unlock them can avoid their challenge. The main idea with From Legend is to make them part of the macro experience by linking them to player’s progression.
I exposed the game structure in a previous article about the subject, but let me expose it once again more precisely, because it fits well the concept:
Above: the macro game structure which is a part of the concept.
The structure is simple: during 5 to 10 minutes, the player fights enemies in different arenas, just like in a classic BtA game. When he succeeds in finishing all these confrontations, he can fight the dragon-god Ling – the final boss. The problem is that he’s a lot more powerful than the player who generally loses. When the defeat happens, the player restarts at the beginning of the sanctuary. Fortunately, it’s the opportunity to perform… achievements!
Above: 'to start a game' is the first achievement for easy learning.
In fact, by performing achievements the player can make Fulin stronger. The achievements have different natures and can be performed every time there is a fight. When an achievement is done, a progression gauge increases, then when a segment of this gauge is full, Fulin levels-up and becomes more powerful (max life increased, equipment inventory bigger, new abilities…). Thus, the player has more chances to beat the dragon-god Ling so he can feel he’s getting better with perseverance. If at the beginning a few of perseverance is required to perform achievements, the more the player progresses on the gauge, the more perseverance is necessary.
What kind of achievements are necessary to perform? How the player can perform them? Isn’t the concept too much repetitive? I’ll develop these points in other dedicated posts. The next one will be about the core gameplay – not directly the achievements because it’s important to understand the gameplay to understand how achievements exploit it at its best.
Stay tuned!
In order to introduce the next post-mortem about beat'em all, China and perseverance, here is a show about the mystic art of Face Changing – or Bian Lian in Chinese. It's quite impressive, and it's one of the biggest reference we used for the last game we made at Egg Ball: From Legend.
Stay tuned!
Push (1987)
Another short movie from Osamu Tezuka – it has been a long time! It doesn’t contain lot of words but as dramatic works, movies have to show things, not to only tell them. As a result, this short movie is very efficient and its theme is still true nowadays.
Great pick for me!