Single Player Games

Tomb Explorer

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 23:07:54 GMT

Tomb Explorer is a desktop game in the same vein as Minesweeper or Chip's Challenge. Your goal is to find the golden treasure chest at the end of each level, while collecting treasures and avoiding obstacles along the way. In this game, you don't have a character to control, but all interaction is done by clicking on tiles. Tiles can be obstacles, triggers or items, and progress depends on finding items or using triggers, sometimes in combinations, to remove the obstacles.

You can interact with some obstacles and triggers just by clicking on them without any item requirements, such as doors and levers. Others will require specific items to pass, such as a green key to unlock a green door, a lantern to light a torch, or a hammer to break down cracked walls. If you have the required item to pass a certain obstacle, it will be used automatically when you click on that obstacle. Some items may only be used once, but other items can be used throughout the level.

Some levels include a countdown timer, meaning you have a limited amount of time to complete the level. If the timer runs out, you lose.

Once you've finished a level, you have a chance at achieving a high score. Your finishing score is effected by a number of elements, but the two primary ways to increase your score are to get through the level as quickly as possible, and find as much treasure as possible along the way. You can also get bonus points for clicking on the golden treasure chest quickly after you spot it, and by collecting 100% of the treasures on a level.

The availability of levels to explore is only limited by the number of levels that people have created. Using the Tomb Editor, you can create your own levels and share them with the world.

Game Concept: Star Traders Meets Mars Sim Project

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 20:31:07 GMT

I was exploring some of the new features in the latest version of Mars Simulation Project, and one of them caught my eye as something that would make traveling through space and trading with space stations, ala LJR's Star Traders, considerably more interesting.

If you download the Mars Sim Project, you'll see in the 'conf' folder a file called parts.xml. That folder contains a huge array of parts, and areas where they may be needed as well as the probability of that part being needed in the repairs. Looking over that, I was thinking, why not add an element like this to a game like Star Traders?

So there you are, flying through space in your old reliable star cruiser. You're headed for planet Xq-99 and while en route your crew is doing routine maintenance. But what's this? Crewman Zed says that he can't fix the power generator without some electrical wire and a power cord. That's bad, because if your power generator can't generate power, then many of your vital ship systems are left to run on whatever power is in the battery. Thus begins your self-imposed mission of "Find electrical wire and power cord".

Now, those two items are fairly common, so since Xq-99 has a fairly developed colony, you're able to purchase the needed parts fairly easily, as well as making some profit through your normal trade deals. However, a few trips later Crewman Zed informs you that, not only does your left thruster require a new timing belt to fix, but your primary life support system is leaking air and he'll require some new plastic tubing and a new LSS circuit board to fix it. That's really bad, because you never want to be in space with only the reserve life support system functioning properly. But where do you find an LSS circuit board? Those are fairly uncommon, so you'll have to do some extra searching in order to find one - plus they're expensive.

If you've ever played Star Traders, you'll remember that the typical gaming experience consisted of grinding from one trade route to another, back and forth until you've made some decent money and you can go and buy some upgrades and take on a more profitable trade route. Those trade routes, of course, go bad periodically so you have to search around for another one. There were a few more aspects to the game than that, like colonizing planets and protecting them from other players, but the majority of the game was grinding trade routes.

Throwing in some routine maintenance on ship systems and occasional required parts to repair them would keep the players on their toes just trying to keep their ship running so they can survive. Sure, you may have an awesome trade route lined up, but if the places on that route don't have the parts you need, then you'll have to make a choice: do I stay and reap the benefits of this profitable trade route or head off to fix my ship before it becomes too late.

Fail to maintain your ship properly and you could end up stranded in space, regardless of how rich you are.

Of course, a few other changes are needed as well. Trade routes should be limited by available supplies, so when supplies are sold out, the trade route ends unless someone else is resupplying the goods. Colonies with abundant parts shouldn't offer as much of a profit for goods as the more needy colonies, if for no other reason just to make sure that the players don't find spots to hang out that have everything they need. When colonies run out of certain trade goods and parts, they'll want to replace these with something else automatically, to keep things flowing in the game world.

This whole concept of needing parts should be fairly easily to implement as well. All you need to do is make sure that each ship is made up of some vital systems, which must be working in order for the ship to use that function.

Each system could have a pre-specified list of possible parts that could be needed for maintenance and how likely it is that those parts will be needed. Once maintenance on a system decides that parts are needed, then that system can no longer be maintained until that part is available in the ship's cargo to fix it with.

Each system could have "hit points" that gradually drop until they reach zero, at which point the system ceases to function. Maintenance would restore the system's hit points, so to speak, keeping everything working right. If you wanted system to gradually break down regardless of anything, then you could gradually drop the maximum hit points (at a slower rate) as well.

You could also add some hired crew to help maintain your ship for you. You could have crew loyalty and morale factors which are adjustable depending on how well your ship supports the number of crew members you have, and how much you're willing to pay them. Unhappy crew might leave randomly when you visit a colony, leaving you in the lurch if you don't hire additional crew.

This, combined with some of the ideas in the Jump Nodes concept, should help to make for an interesting game world.

More Brainstorming Over The Gauntlet

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 17:09:58 GMT

I've been debating over some game mechanics for The Gauntlet in order to get the game to flow a little more smoothly. One of the big things that I want to take care of is to give each mover, be it player or enemy, pixel-based movement along the grid system, with circular collision detection.

Basically what that means is that when your character moves or when an enemy moves, they will move in their specified direction by a number of pixels until they've reached the next tile, then they'll stop. Detecting when two movers have bumped into each other will, instead of being done on a tile-by-tile basis, instead be done with collision detection where if one mover is within a certain distance in pixels to another, they've bumped.

What that means is that you, as the player, won't be harmed by enemies until you're actually close to them in terms of pixels. So if you're moving onto a tile that the enemy is moving off of at the same rate, you'll never touch. Likewise, if you see an enemy moving onto your tile, you have a brief moment to start moving your character away from that tile before the enemy will harm you.

Hopefully those changes will remove some of the frustrations from the older system - the difficulty of trying to figure out which way enemies are moving.

I was thinking I'd give the game an over world map, which is just a quick way for the player to wander around the world without having to explore a bunch of empty terrain. On the over world map there would be villages made up of individual houses that the player can enter for a zoomed in view, and dungeons, which are places that the player can enter in search of loot.

Westrose Island, a possible overworld map.

Loot is the main reason for the player to enter dangerous areas now. Finding treasures will get you money, and money will get you where you want to go. You may need to pay for passage through a mountain pass, or pay a fee to cross a span of water on a ferry. Of course, you'll need to buy some equipment in the towns, too. But for the most, towns will be there as a place for the player to glean information on where to find things, and just to give the game a general feeling of not being so alone.

I'm thinking I'll throw in a nice little fade in, fade out visual effect for when the player enters a house or dungeon, or changes rooms within the dungeon. So when the player goes through a door, you'll see the door open, a glimpse of what's on the other side, then everything will fade out, then fade back in again with the player on the other side, then the door closes. This will help to differentiate areas, so that its easier for the player to know when an area has been reset.

I still need to figure out a good overall goal for the story though. Anyone have any suggestions? I was thinking either a "find your missing friend" or "find the legendary treasure" type of quest. So you'll find yourself on an island, hunting for treasures in order to pay your way and find the items that you'll need in order to get to your primary goal.

Blobble Goes Single Player

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 13:42:11 GMT

The developers at Iccusion Entertainment have finally decided to update Blobble with the possibility for a single player to play against the computer, meaning that this game now qualifies to be listed as a single player game. Introducing computer opponents to their games has never been high on their list of priorities, but Blobble is the second of their games (after Hindrance) to receive such a treatment. Kudos, guys.

Blobble uses the same colorful eye-candy that Iccursion games have developed a reputation for. The game pieces are made up of the standard rainbow hues, along with a small array of special pieces. Pipes decorate the exterior of the game screen and everything flows together nicely.

The goal of the game is to clump together as many blobs of the same color as you can. When you drop a new blob onto a pile of same-color blobs, you get points based on how many blobs are in that group. Larger groups give you more points, but since you're taking turns with your opponent, if they drop a same-color blob onto the same pile after you do, they'll get more points than you, so watch out!

As you play, you'll be provided with a random assortment of blobs to work with, and you must drop one of these from the top each turn. Typically these are selected from the six main colors, with yellows being the most common and reds being rare, but sometimes there will be one of several special pieces thrown into the mix. These pieces might change the colors of the blobs where they land, give the player a free turn (I'll explain why that's important in a moment), or smash a hole in the playing area to give everyone more space to work with.

Throughout the play area there are several special tiles, which provide free turns, special pieces, double or even tripple scores. Naturally, when you've got a hefty pile of blobs and you want to drop another blob onto the pile for big points, you'll want to be making your way towards the double or tripple score tiles. Just be careful, because if you put those tiles within reach, you're taking the chance that your opponent can steal that treasure load of points from you. This is where one of those special pieces comes in handy; the free turn piece. You drop a free turn piece below a score multiplier tile, and then you have an extra turn to drop your piece on the tile and get the bonus without giving your opponent a chance to steal it from you!

As stated earlier, Blobble now allows for a single player to player against the computer. How does the computer stand up against a human player? The computer comes in two levels of difficulty, easy or hard. Easy is competitive, but not overly challenging. Its good for people who are new to the game and still learning the rules. Hard is better suited for experienced players, and will provide enough challenge to keep the game interesting. Having played this game on and off since the single player update was released, I've won maybe 6 out of 8 games that I've played against the computer on hard mode. So while I'm most likely going to win, there's still that element of danger where if I slack off, the computer will likely pull out a few extra points and steal the victory from under me.

So overall, Blobble is a solid game that's good for people who have a few minutes to burn. My only complaints are that the computer players could use a few tweaks in their decision making, and there's no depth to the game - nothing to achieve from winning. At least, not when you're playing by yourself. But its still a good time waster.

Presentation - Trial By Fire

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 02:21:40 GMT

Yet another game concept.

As of late I've been striving to come up with effective ways to present BYOND games with custom interfaces in a polished, clean-cut sort of way. Most commercial games will adjust your screen's resolution to fit the game, and most FLASH-based games will just run from a web page somewhere. That leaves any BYOND games in want of full-screen support in an uncomfortable niche: having to fill the screen without adjusting the user's resolution. And that means adjusting for different monitor sizes and aspect ratios. A difficult task.

One site that deals in games for casual players showcases a lot of games made in FLASH, and almost every game on that site has plenty of eye candy. I thought about submitting some BYOND games for review there, but looking around, I don't think BYOND has any up-to-date games that are up to par visually with what that site is offering. So hey, lets make some!

Designing full-screen interfaces with BYOND, though, presents a few problems. The first problem is that when you have the screen stretching percentage-wise to fit the player's resolution, things tend to get really, really ugly if the player's resolution has a peculiar aspect ratio, such as a flat screen with 1280x800 resolution (which means its extra wide). In that case, things stretch in a peculiar way and the whole interface starts to look hokey. Then there's the problem that while the interface may want to stretch horizontally to fit the resolution, the map window doesn't. You'll end up with some exceedingly tacky black lines on either side of your map window.

There are two possible solutions to these problems that I can figure. The first and most complicated way is to force the game into full screen mode, then use an invisible control at the bottom-right of the main window to find out what the player's resolution. From there, each game screen must be built dynamically to fit the player's resolution. This can be really cool, but its extremely difficult to have a graphical interface that does this.

The second way is to float the actual game screen in a pool of black or textured background. That means that the actual game window's size doesn't change, it just stays centered in the middle of the screen and any extra padding on either side is filled with background. This way is much more conducive to graphical interfaces, since the aspect ratio doesn't need to change.

As of now I've started testing the first method with a new Solar Conquest interface, and I can say that dynamically designing about 5 different game screens is a major pain in the hindquarters. Plus, as stated earlier, its very difficult to add things like graphical borders and backgrounds to the mix. So now its time to try approach number two: floating the game screen in black.

Solar Conquest concept has a dynamic interface.

The Game: Trail By Fire

The game concept I had in mind is similar to the Gauntlet game(s) in the way that the game looks and feels, but the mechanics are somewhat different. Instead of a real-time 'dodge the enemies and use the items' setup, this game will be turn-based. The goal is still the same: dodge the enemies. But the approach is different. Instead of actually moving around pattern-following enemies as they come and go, you need to use items and skills to evade enemies that are actively hunting you down.

In my conceptual application for this idea, you take on the role of a thief attempting to steal the prized treasure(s) from some castle. Of course, the castle guards won't stand for this, and they're going to want to arrest you and stick you in the dungeon as quickly as possible. You'll have to use some tricks and skills to evade the guards.

Climbing through a window to escape the guards.

In that screenshot, the player is using their ability to climb through windows, a skill which the guards lack, to escape from an otherwise doomed situation. Other skills and items would work similarly to help the player escape pursuers, but some items may be in limited supply and some things may not work on certain enemies.

Climbing through windows - works great against enemies who are slower and less nimble than the player, but an equally agile pursuer may be able to move through windows as well.

Hiding behind things - If you've ever played My Life As A Spy by Skysaw, you'll know what this is all about. Find something large to hide behind while the pursuers are out of sight, and when they get to where they were expecting to find you but don't see you there, they'll give up and go home. Works well against dimwitted enemies who's senses aren't too keen.

Blinding powder - a limited use item that'll stop a sensitive pursuer in their tracks, but it'll only work when they're next to the enemy, and will only last a few turns.

Claw traps - another way to stop enemies in their tracks would be to have them step in one of these. Leave them behind you in clever locations and hope to either trap a pursuer or leave them looking for another way around, especially if used in choke points.

And of course picking locks, opening and closing gates, secret doors, teleporting - all are within the scope of the game's theme!

So as an example, one goal might be to lure some soldiers away from a city gate so you can get through. In order to do that, you'd need to first go into the house next to the gate, open up some windows (since you can't climb through a closed window, and you can only open windows from inside), then head out to the gates and get the soldiers' attentions. Following a brief run, you lure the soldiers into the house, get them to follow you into the room with the windows, jump out a window (leaving the soldiers stuck having to go back around) and high-tail it through the gates and then use the lever on the far side to close them, stranding the soldiers on the other side of the bars.

How to evade the soldiers at the gate.

The Interface

I was thinking of re-using the interface that I'd planned on for the next version of The Gauntlet, which so far hasn't made it past my hard drive other than a few screenshots. The interface, as described in my previous post, requires the use of the arrow keys to walk around, an action key to go into targeting mode, followed by another arrow key to use the selected item in a particular direction. There would also be two keys for cycling through your inventory. However, given that this is a turn-based game there's really no reason why we couldn't include mouse support.

With such simple controls, the only interface elements we need would be a map window, a scrolling inventory display at the top of the map window, and perhaps some statistics below. Everything outside of that would be shrouded either in black or a textured background. We could even put some fancy borders around the game window if we wanted to, or have it fade from textured background to game.

Extremely simplistic interface concept.

However, one reason why I, in particular, wanted a plain black background is so I can do some cool fade-in effects with labels. If you have a black label with black font on a black background, then you can input some text in the label and, using a loop, incrementally increase the color of the front from black to white in less than a second. The effect is really nice, and I think it adds a lot of polish to any BYOND game (even if it flickers a little bit).

The Story

Here's where the hard part comes in. I've figured out that designing a simple game like this breaks down into three sections. First you have to design the game engine, which is easy enough, but takes a considerable investment of time and effort. The second is graphics, including game graphics, interface graphics, and just plain making things look good in every way, shape and form. The third is content. Its easy to built a game engine and make things look flashy, but after that, you have to actually give the player something to do, and that's where the really hard part begins since if you've also designed the engine and drawn the graphics, you're probably going to be pretty burnt out by now.

Its also going to be a challenge to come up with myriads of situations where things are going to be chasing you, you're going to be running away, and still providing enough variety to keep everything fresh and interesting.

On top of that, I've discovered that I, personally, am horrid at coming up with good stories.

But nonetheless, here's what I have so far. You're a thief. Or a treasure hunter, if you prefer. There is a castle, and according to your sources, the castle houses a very valuable treasure hidden deep within - below the dungeon, below the catacombs, somewhere in the heart. Its very possible the current lord isn't even aware of its existence.

So your job is to sneak into the castle, evade the guards, find your way into the dungeon, find the secret entrance to the catacombs, make your way through that maze until you uncover the treasure vault, and inside the relic that you seek.

Wandering around through the dungeons below the castle.

Well, the relic in my mind is a nice little ring that, when used, will teleport you to one of several locations. And using the ring would be a wise idea since at that point you'll have lots of guards closing in on you. You may never be able to return to the castle, but you'll be stuck with trying to find your way home, running from whatever those other places have to run from, and moving back and forth between the areas that the ring takes you to in order to find the items you'll need to progress.

In the end, you'll always have a way to escape if you use the ring (unless I slap some limitations on it!), so avoiding death shouldn't be a big deal and that will hopefully take a lot of frustrations out of the game. But in order to achieve your goals, you'll want to make it through these tight spots instead of warping away to safety, since once you've warped away you'll have to make your way back again.

No, I haven't come up with a good ending. I told you, I'm horrid at story telling. I'm also not one of these people who starts with an ending and works backwards. But anyway, this is the story so far, and aside from cramming the game full of content, I can't see any reason why the rest of it shouldn't work.

Simplicity Versus Depth

Mon, 12 May 2008 09:22:14 GMT

The other day I was carpooling on a three hour long road trip. It was about 10 o'clock at night, so I pulled out my laptop and, looking for something that I could do without being able to see the keyboard, I clicked on my unfinished public release of The Gauntlet.

Now, the current release of The Gauntlet has extremely simple controls. You use the arrow keys to move your character around, and bumping into things activates them. The only controls beyond that are speed controls, which aren't really necessary, and the ability to load and save games.

When you're in the dark and you can't see the keyboard, but you can find the arrow keys, that means you can still play the game, because you've got your hands on the controls, kind of like with a console controller - you know where all the buttons are.

The Gauntlet has very simple controls.

Now, in a newer engine that I was developing for the game, I was going for more depth over the simplicity, because it seemed like the first version might be a little too simplistic. In the newer version, you use the arrow keys to walk around, use the center key to target and object followed by an arrow key in the direction you want to use that object. You also must use a specific object by using the up-right and up-left numpad keys to circulate through the inventory. Plus, you can use the 0 key on the number pad to view your status screen.

Of course, one of the first problems I encountered with this on my laptop was that the laptop doesn't have a number pad, which basically crippled the game.

The newer engine, however, also allows things such as dialog with NPCs, and having the player choose an item before using it makes the player think about what they need to do instead of just bumping into things randomly, hoping to activate something.

The new Gauntlet engine has more depth.

So the question now is, which is better? The simplistic original engine, with easy controls and a shallow learning curve, or the newer engine, with more depth, more complexity, and more complicated controls?

Solar Conquest Planets

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 17:44:50 GMT

I'm in the process of a slow and progressive interface remodel for Solar Conquest, and while I'm at it I'm considering reworking some of the game's less impressive systems, one of which is the planetary upgrades.

As it is, planet's upgrade when you click on an upgrade button. They can upgrade one section per turn and will not get any production for that turn, and will not be able to upgrade anything the turn after that. Aside from the obvious annoyance of having to come back every other turn to upgrade each planet, this also resembles Crispy's game much more than I'd like.

I'm considering an alternative system where, instead of clicking buttons to upgrade something, you get to choose which section of a planet you want them to upgrade, and then you can shift emphasis between ugprading the planet and producing ships. For example, I could tell my planet to spend 25% of its production upgrading infrastructure and 75% building the ship class of my choice. Then I can leave the planet alone for several turns and it will continue to build and upgrade all the while, without me having to do anything, unless I want it to start upgrading or building something else.

One thing I like about this idea is that, if you see an enemy fleet approaching your planet within a few turns, you can focus your planet's production 100% on defense or producing new ships if you need to bolster your resistance.

Another advantage to this would be that I can use a selection window to let players choose their upgrade type instead of buttons, which means that I can include more upgrade types more easily. What I'm thinking so far:

Population Growth: At 0%, this gives the planet's standard population growth. At 100%, it doubles that growth.

Infrastructure: This increases the planet's maximum population limit.

Defenses: Increases the strength of the defending fleet by percentage.

Star Port: I'm thinking rather than increasing the travel speed, this will increase the RANGE which ships are able to travel from the planet, with a reasonable minimum. I do this because I want to require colony ships being built before players can claim a planet eventually, and I don't want them flying across the system to get all the best planets, resulting in very scattered empires.

Scanners: Hopefully I can, without too much trouble, change this to detect everything within a certain range of the planet, instead of just detecting anything within a certain range APPROACHING the planet.

If anyone else has any ideas to add to that, I hope you'll suggest them.

Ship design selection would also work similarly, where you click on the button to change the design and you get a popup window with a list of designs to choose from. This will also allow me to eliminate the interface limitations to having customizable ship classes.

That's what I have so far. Hoping for some feedback!

Game Concept: Jump Nodes

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:12:54 GMT

Since BYOND now has the ability to offset the client's eye by pixels, now is the time to start thinking about games which take advantage of this new functionality. A lot of games which formerly looked clunky because the client's eye jumped from tile to tile while the player's mob moved seamlessly through the game can now be done properly.

Theodis is already taking advantage of the new functionality in his RacingGame, but I've always wanted to create one of those games where you explore the stars in a relatively infinite universe, similar to Elite games.

The big question is, how do you create an infinite universe using BYOND maps? You can, if you want, try to create a system where reaching the end of one map, the game uses images and/or screen objects to fill in the gaps at the edge of the map, and once you reach the edge of the map you're transported to the next map. This is a really cool effect, but it will most likely create a lot of overhead, not to mention an abundance of technical difficulties.

If you've ever played FreeSpace or FreeSpace 2 by Volition, Inc., one of the ideas in that game was that the each star system is connected by a series of "jump nodes". In order to get from one star to another, you need to go to one of these jump nodes, enter it in order to access hyperspace and be taken to the next star. A ship could travel anywhere within the star system using its own drives, but travel between stars required jump nodes.

(Ship from FreeSpace 2 using a jump node.)

So, lets apply that idea to a BYOND game. Instead of using an "unlimited map" in the sense that I described a moment ago, lets just give each star system a map, perhaps 50x50 or 100x100 tiles. It doesn't need to be too big, since exploring big empty space isn't all that fun and we can pretty much just cram planets together and take out the annoying travel time. Now our game begins with one star system, which is already fairly populated. People have just discovered jump nodes and how to use them, and now an intrepid mass of explorers is heading out to discover new star systems. The beginning system may have 2-5 jump nodes in it to start with.

Each jump node is created with some pre-set coordinates, which in reality is a psuedo-random number seed. When a ship enters a jump node, unless the targeted solar system has been visited recently and is still in the game's memory, the game will quickly generate a new solar system using the psuedo-random number seed to determine the new system's layout. The game will also do a search for any save files containing modifications or additions to this newly created system. While the new map is generating, the player will be greeted with a happy "traveling through hyperspace" image.

When a star system is created for the first time (as in, there's no associated file for that seed), then it will generate some new jump nodes randomly in the star system, plus a jump node back to the system where the ship came from. In the new system, the players can mine minerals or trade with aliens or do whatever the game's engine has players doing to pass the time. Players can then travel back to their home system in order to trade in their goods and make a huge profit, upgrade their ship and prepare for a yet longer expedition into unknown territory.

So there you have it. Players start out at their home system, enter a jump node to another random system, and from that system enter jump nodes to other random systems on into infinity. The chances of finding a random jump node back to your home system or a previously visited system are pretty slim depending on how much variety you provide in generating random seeds. But it should give players plenty to do as long as randomly generated systems are sufficiently interesting. And there's nothing like that driving urge to explore yet more of the unknown with your newly upgraded ship.

Article: Designing Strategy Games

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 23:38:48 GMT

Peachpit offers an in-depth article on Designing Strategy Games with lots of useful ideas for aspiring strategy game builders. The article is a compendium of knowledge collected from eleven different expert developers from eleven different companies, each offering their own tips and tricks on how to get things done.

Some quotes that I especially liked:

"Get something running in the first month that you can actually play. (It doesn't matter if graphics aren't so great.)"

-- Brian Reynolds, Big Huge Games

"Each strategy should have both a unique strength to make it cool and a unique weakness to keep it from being too powerful."

-- Brian Reynolds, Big Huge Games

"There's a temptation to create "the ultimate game of all time," so keep your focus on a couple of cool features, make sure those are great, and leave some room for a second game."

-- Sid Meier, Firaxis

"Don't imitate successful games only to the point of being at least as good as they are on their strong points. Create a new experience with your game. Nobody buys imitations."

-- Bruce C. Shelley, Ensemble Studios

"In the end, game design comes down to interface design-the key to making games playable is how you'll get people to interact with your concept and how simple the interface is."

-- Peter Molyneux, Lionhead Studios

So if you're looking to design a strategy game, check it out. You may not be aiming to create anything on the scale of what these guys make, but I'm sure you'll find something in there that'll give you some food for thought.

Game Concept: Rock-Paper-Scissors++

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:12:59 GMT

I once played a game that was based on the rock-paper-scissors concept, but taking it to the next level and turning it into a board game. It was simple, a series of rock, paper and scissors pieces laid out in formation on a checker board. A rock could take scissors, scissors could take paper, and paper took rock. You could move one piece per turn, and once you'd taken all the other player's pieces, you won.

So I thought, "Hey, why not take that idea and expand on it further?" In Chess, you don't have to be troubled with hunting down all of the other player's pieces because the only piece that really matters is the King. So what if we added a "king" piece to this rock-paper-scissors game? Perhaps the "king" can take any piece, but can also be taken by any other piece in the game. If you lose your "king", your game is over.

Adding a king piece would allow for some more strategy, faster games and less "wrap it up after you've already won" games, but it would still not give it a whole lot of extra depth, since the primary gameplay would still be the same. So lets add another element: taking multiple pieces at once.

(Additionally, in order to make sure that there is an even number for each of the rock, paper and scissor pieces, we're going to add a "defender" or "queen" piece in front of the "king", which acts the same way that the "king" does. It can take any piece, and be taken by any piece.)

Since the game will take place on a large checkers-style board, with more than enough empty tiles, we'll let the players take advantage of those empty spaces in their strategy. When your piece takes one of your opponent's pieces, your piece will take the other piece's spot. Now, if from that spot your piece can take another one of your opponent's pieces, then it can take that piece in the same turn. This can continue until your piece reaches a tile from which none of your opponent's pieces are vulnerable.

That means players can use sneaky combination attacks on their opponents. For example, lets suppose that you're the red player in the depiction above. Notice the paper where the green arrow starts. Using that piece of paper, you could take the neighboring rock. That would result in your opponent using his or her scissors to eliminate your paper, since it poses a threat to your opponent's "king". It would be a 1-for-1 deal, with neither player gaining any real advantage from it.

However, since your opponent has two rocks lined up, your piece of paper can take both the adjacent rock, and once it has taken that rock's spot, it can then take the next rock down the line as well. Plus, it is now next to your opponent's "king", which means that from three tiles away you can take your opponent's "king" and win the game. 3-for-0. A much better deal.

That new rule will add some more strategic depth to this game beyond the "my piece takes your piece, your piece takes my piece" mantra that it would otherwise consist of. It might be good to throw in a few additional rules, such as allowing any piece to move two tiles on its first move. Its just a matter of play-testing it out to see which way is more strategic and fun.