#design spotlight

[stralor]

Design Spotlight: The Witness

I had the opportunity to play through The Witness some time back, and I was both impressed by the experience and occasionally frustrated by some decisions. Today, in true Design Spotlight tradition, let's focus on one aspect of the design that resonated with me.

Certainly, there are tons of pieces talking about The Witness's puzzles, narrative structure, or audio design, so, I'd like to pivot and talk about the game's spatial flow.

We're gonna babble light-heartedly about level design for a bit.

Well crafted level design often curves in on itself. New paths with open up and new perspectives in the same space are gained after some progression. Early Skyward Sword levels were strong in this regard. So was, famously, Dark Souls.

The trick: surprise the player without confusing them. Getting truly lost is rarely the point. Yet, being temporarily blinded to the larger context is great for inspiring wonder by opening new perspectives.

The Witness excels at this.

Turn a corner and you're in a new biome with a spectacular view. Follow a path, stumble onto new places to explore. Explore a place and find yourself spat out somewhere familiar, with a new shortcut unlocked.

The game starts with a somewhat linear play space and turns it into a well-connected web. And the layout should be web-like; the game features regular backtracking (and the tone is antithetical to fast travel).

(Fast travel sucks anyway... another topic for another time)

What's brilliant about it is how it mimics our unconscious spatial learning. When we enter a new space, whether virtually or IRL, a tunnel vision of orienteering occurs. We focus on the general feel and major landmarks as we build out our core understanding. This core understanding is rudimentary, even linear. It's also often accompanied with a sense of wonder.

It's once we've gained a familiarity with a space that we notice the finer, subtler details. Our awareness expands; we see new interconnections between areas, and, I suggest, we're more open to unexpected stimuli. The Witness's level design mimics this with its explicitly expanding spaces: initial areas are contained, understandable, and linear; later progress in the game opens up alternate routes, new methods of travel (the boat, underground tunnels), and expansive, winding spaces with hidden details, all while encouraging re-exploration of past zones. The game encourages our natural spatial learning, and progresses with it.

There's something "fun" here. Well, it certainly stuck with me, an admitted explorer type. The thing is, it doesn't often show more than the player is comfortable exploring at once. And the deeper aspects sprinkled everywhere are left for organic player discovery: there's a definite "WHOA" moment when the player discovers the hidden environmental "puzzles".

Other people have talked about how the game's puzzle progression usually does a good job of teaching the player. I'd argue the spatial design does an even better job of informing player expectations than the puzzles do. There's something to take away from that.

Thanks for reading, chums

[stralor]

A week ago, a game appeared on Steam and the front page of reddit: Geneshift, by one Ben “bencelot” Johnson.

I’m trying something new and giving Medium a shot.

This week’s blog post is in the link.

Feel free to let me know how awful or awesome this decision was <3

[stralor]

Design Spotlight: Tales of Maj’Eyal 4

Last time on Design Spotlight, I talked about some of the design choices that made Steamworld Heist really shine. This time, I'm going to hone in on Tales of Maj'Eyal 4 (aka ToME4).

Where Steamworld Heist was strong (feedback, animations, SFX, clear mechanics introduction), ToME4 is often weak. Yet, ToME4 is an impressive experience and strong in many ways that Steamworld Heist was not.

Let's talk about it.

ToME4 has incredible depth, responsiveness to past player actions (seemingly across campaigns), and sheer strength of content. There's certainly extreme replayability here. It's dense and tactically challenging, though. It's not for the faint of heart when it comes to learning sheets and sheets of abilities and statistics.

It isn't news that I like complex stats and mechanic interactions (my current project is a resource management sim, after all). Combat in ToME4 is often about combo-ing abilities in the right order against the right enemies as you get flooded, but it's also about knowing your core weaknesses. A design choice I found interesting (and, let's be honest, often frustrating to my desire for heroic power) is the trinity of Physical, Mental, and Spell attack types. It’s designed so that your best corner of the trinity will almost always be the same for both offense and defense... and you'll struggle against attacks of one or both of the other corners.

Play a melee tank, and you're asking for trouble with spells. Build up your defenses against those, and you'll have sacrificed resources that could have been put toward mind attacks. Play a ranged caster and you'll be vulnerable to any archer or sneaky melee character. Play a summoner... and, well, die to anything that gets past your helpers.

You can't underestimate any corner of the trinity. They can all disable and debuff you in unique and painful ways, and they can all straight up kill you once your defenses are down.

I'd often forget about Mental. Physical and Spell is just so prevalent in early and mid game that when a competent mind-attacker came along, I'd always have a fight for my life.

It's a simple thing, and certainly not even a main draw. If I've learned anything from my time in board game design, however, it's this: don't underestimate the tried-and-true core mechanics. So much of the game builds off this Physical-Mental-Spell dynamic, and it works.

As designers, we can see it as a form of the three-legged stool: Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Can you think of any other examples of RPS being used well in games?

Talk to you next time!

[stralor]

Design Spotlight: Steamworld Heist

Oh man, what a beautifully crafted game. I'd argue that providing feedback to the user is this game's strongest suit. It's amazing.

It's so good that the game could be shit (it's not) and it'd still be enjoyable to play. But, I've talked about various forms of feedback before (a few times), so I'll skip over that this time.

Instead, let's talk about a different strength of Steamworld Heist: the mechanics introduction curve.

Not Holding the Player's Hands

Core gameplay is introduced softly, letting the player understand the basics of what's going on. And occasionally a little tip will pop up when a new character ability is used. But that's the extent of the "telling" portion of teaching the player. The rest is "showing": they're not afraid to throw you in the pool and say, "Swim!"

Most of player learning is left to organic discovery. New mechanics are presented at the last possible moment; goop on the ground doesn't mean anything until the player interacts with it (in this case, shooting it), yet it's very clearly in the scene and relevant ever before its purpose is discovered. Moreover, it's clear what is happening once it's triggered.

A few examples:

Shields - Don't have health pop up when shot, so aren't destructible

Conditional cover - Only pops up when you're adjacent to it, yet very clearly makes a show of it and is highlighted in movement mode

Upgraded cover objects - Shows both thematic consistency and also is designed to appear "better" and more durable than that old stuff before you ever see its health bars

This is possible due to that fantastic feedback. There is art direction that foregrounds important/ interactable objects, responsive SFX, and VFX that clearly demonstrates what's going on.

The core mechanics of the game are also simple and exposed to the player. There's no large abstraction for the player to figure out: health and damage is literal and you can see what does what and how and when. This means new mechanics can be layered on without turning complication into confusion.

I suspect the turn-based nature of the game really lends a helping hand to this last-possible-moment form of discovery. There doesn't have to be a million things happening on the screen, competing for player attention; action is methodical, and chaotic only when the player made it so. You can take a split second to show 'conditional cover' opening up (and the player will see it!), since bullets and explosions and other unit movement isn't simultaneous; the cover is the only thing moving.

Lessons to Learn

Steamworld Heist shows us that there's a huge ceiling to how good a game can feel. Likewise, turn-based focus, exposed core mechanics, and organic discovery together show us that players' hands don't need to be held for them to get a full understanding.

How much of this can we take away to our own games?

Obviously the merits of turn-based focus aren't possible in, say, a realtime first-person shooter. 4Xs might require a large amount of abstraction. And tiny game dev outfits don't necessarily have the time, money, or manpower to punch out this level of polish and gamefeel.

The model is still relevant, though. Player focus is a (finite) resource we can tap to create clarity. Judicious use of feedback, timing, and simple presentation can make all the difference in any game.

I know I certainly could use the memo.

Thanks for stopping by and giving me a read. You can catch all these posts by following here and/or on twitter.

I'll see you again in a couple weeks.

[stralor]

Design Spotlight: Payday 2

I started playing a bit of Payday 2 recently. I'd heard a lot of buzz about it. I figured everyone must be on to something.

At first, I expected an intense shooter, wrapped in a heist game. I was looking forward to excellent gunplay and some tongue-in-cheek characters.

Ends up, Payday 2 takes itself seriously. And it's all about the heist.

Gameplay

Sure, it's a shooter, if you want it that way. The gunplay isn't terribly exciting by my standards. Rather, it's often waves and waves of enemies from all sides, pecking at you with sublethal bullets while you dish out constant carnage. No leaning, nor locked cover: it quickly turns into a chaotic run-and-gun where you expect to take a few bullets and keep going. In some ways, that's to be expected; it's quite the Halo model (even with "armor" that acts just like Halo's shields), though without the world-building consistency to back it up.

Instead, the focus of the game seems to be on the optional stealth aspects. It has guard patrols, vision based on where someone's head is facing (they won't see you while they wipe off their pant leg), noise sensitivity, cameras, silent alarms, dead-man switches, hostage taking, moving corpses, randomized layouts, lasers, and more. I'm routinely impressed when I get caught by yet another layer of security I didn't expect.

Still, whether you play a perfect Sam Fisher or frustratingly end up setting off an alarm and forcing your way in while you have a shoot-out with police, four things will actually decide whether you like this game or not.

The Make-or-Break

Two Bad:

Terrible, cumbersome menus and user interfaces

Lack of a sufficient tutorial

Two Good:

Wonderfully vast weapon and character upgrade systems

Tons of vanity options (in the form of masks), often combo'd with an extreme number of possible achievements

As this is a Design Spotlight, and not a review, let's take a final moment to focus on those two things I feel Payday 2 has done spectacularly.

It certainly adds to the addiction and player drive to keep the carrot just out of reach. Having so many things to unlock, achieve, or just try out lends itself to players thinking, "If only I could do this, then I'd be even better," and, "I bet I can do that if I put my mind to it."

Certainly there's a barrier-to-entry effect with "too much". Look at Dwarf Fortress. However, as with Dwarf Fortress, "too much" also contributes to longevity, creativity, and passionate fandom.

The player that sticks through long enough to sort everything out will be glad to have more to explore and do.

It's the same effect we usually see in sandbox games like Minecraft or Terraria.

I didn't expect to find it in a first-person shooter about robbing banks.

[cesnotchess]

My Current Design Obsession

New Post! My current design obsession from @umbra_ltd #designspotlight

So, it’s been a while since I talked design, but I’ve recently become a little bit obsessed with the online shop Superbalist.

It has the most beautiful, affordable, designer clothes, furniture, crockery and everything in between and I might have a little problem. I had to start a wishlist because of how many tabs I had open on my laptop of the things that I needed to get – for reasons, of course.

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[zilliondesigns]

This e-cig company logo has a flair for dramatic propaganda-styled branding! Does it call for a liberation from tobacco? Well, that's what the client asked for... What would you have done if a client handed you this brief: http://goo.gl/fnzxpO