#grid based movement

[ayearofgames]

Genre Study #2 - Grid Based Movement Games

Games I’ve Played:

DND

Storytelling elements happen outside the actual mechanical interactions of the game -> i.e. I picture a different fight then everybody else playing even if only by a little bit

Positioning in battle or when sneaking or whenever matters and affects your stats -> this again is about considering all the entities on the field and playing them off of one another

House on Haunted Hill

During pauses you can talk to your mates and ruminate over what your best options are

Movements aren’t based on random dice rolls, it’s specific to your stats and is very observable

Your actions are modified by items you have, but you can only have one at a time

Chess

Different entities have different properties that can be used together to create strategies

At any point you can stop to consider your actions and mentally run through all possible outcomes

Corrypt

Time to observe the environment and think about my actions

All entities have learnable behaviors

Entities interact in ways that make sense and ways that define the physicality of the world

Layered element of gameplay where you have to think about the micro and macro effect of your actions

No explicit tutorial, just puzzles of increasing difficulty

Crypt of the Necrodancer

Movement is based on the rhythm of the song’s beat, but you don’t have to be continuously moving

Combat is simplified to moving in the direction of whatever you’re fighting, so battles are all about correctly timing against the enemy’s specific pattern

Goals of this game:

Minimalist gameplay

Learn without me telling you how to play

Innovative mechanic

What makes this game different from other games at a face level?

Turn based puzzle platformer inspired by Corrypt and Spelunky

Layered gameplay

Beyond the moment to moment navigation and puzzle solving, the player should be thinking about the over-arching goal

Compelling interest curve

To me, this kind of minimalist gameplay isn’t interesting for long. There needs to be some kind of gameplay hook besides just getting progressively harder over time.

[ayearofgames]

July 26th - #4 Spelunky/Corrypt Mashup

Premise: Explore procedural caves with Spelunky style design with grid-based movement. Mechanics:

Move in any of the cardinal directions using arrow keys.

Gravity will start having an affect after one turn in the air. Each turn will drop you by one square, but will still apply your horizontal movement.

It's impossible to die in the game, but enemies can push you off ledges. You can also stand on top of/ride enemies.

Hitting the spacebar will skip your movement step allowing all other entities to take a turn

The player can pickup and hold one item at a time and it will affect their gameplay. You can pickup/swap with items on the ground by hitting down on top of them

Each entity in the world has a built in logic of how it will react to the player and other entities in the world

Entities:

Goblin: Will patrol paths horizontally. If a player is nearby horizontally, it will push the player towards the nearest wall or ledge. If the player is riding the Goblin, it will continuously patrol its platform.

Bat: Patrols the sky. If a player is nearby, the bat will approach the player to keep them grounded and push them around. If the player is riding the Bat, it will patrol as usual keeping one unit from the wall to keep from crushing the player.

Lava: Lava will continuously grow throughout the room until the player is effectively stuck. The only way out at that point is to undo.

Items:

Winged Boots: Gravity will take an extra step to start affecting your movement

Pickaxe: You can destroy certain types of environment squares by walking into them

Magic Wand: You can't move with this item equipped, instead you cast a spell in your hit button direction that swaps your position with whatever entity is hit

World:

Unlike Spelunky or Corrypt, the world is endlessly large

You can keep playing continuously until you get yourself stuck

You only have 100 undos throughout your run, no exceptions

The world you're exploring is documented on a map you carry and can be used to backtrack and retrace your steps

Unless you're actively playing, your progress will be wiped at midnight and a new map seed will be generated

Leaderboard:

Stats shown: steps taken, rooms explored, riches gathered

Sorting: friends/global

Sorting2: daily, weekly, overall