Platformer musings

[techbear]

Gamasutra published an interesting and in-depth analysis of the hit platformers of the past 10 years.

http://gamasutra.com/features/20060804/boutros_01.shtml

One of the things I got out of the article was complexity of interaction; not just running and jumping, but what happens if you kick a monster into a power-up, or enter a warp-pipe while carrying a monster?

This design concept (interactive richness) was pioneered (for some people) by the old NetHack game on college mainframes. In nethack, you could kill a bat, drag it's body to an Altar, and make a Cloak of Night. Nethack was famous for having HUNDREDS of these cool relationships; the fun was in exploring and finding them.

I've done a lot of top-scrolling shooters, and I realize that most of what I've made does NOT have interactive richness. Player, enemies, bullets, all with simple, one-dimensional interactions. There's a great deal of room for more interactions, like Galaga's ship-hostage.

Is Interactive Richness an overlooked and powerful design paradigm, especially for other genres?

[Applewood]

One genre that's gagging for it is RTS games. Red Alert 2 touched on some things like this such as putting different (sometimes enemy) men in transporters (they all fired differently) etc., but it could be done a lot better/deeper imo.

(I sooo want to write an RTS too. I just don't think the effort to sales ratio is anywhere near realistic for either an Indie or a full commercial studio).

I do like this as a general design principal though. It's definitely one of those things that goes on the list of "can we haves" at the start of a project.

[svero]

The information above leads me to believe that nowadays, we as developers have fallen into a habit of spoon-feeding the player with tutorials and far fewer things to do or play within the initial stages of the game.

The goal of any developer conforming to this trend is clearly to make their game accessible to as many players as possible. This “widening the market” style of design can indeed make a game easier to get into, but at the same time, it can feel patronising and also put a player off playing any more. Although the aim ‘widen the market’ is a valid one, the solution of making things easier to meet this aim, is perhaps misfocused

I've been feeling this way for some time about the latest casual games. Too tutorial heavy. Early levels too easy.

[Anthony Flack]

I was wondering what the point of this extremely long, bean-counting analysis was; it didn't seem to be that insightful as far as design goes, since the design process is far more subtle and dynamic than this kind of analysis has the scope to cover.

Then at the end, it was revealed. This spreadsheet-style approach is the way you convince marketing people that your idea is good. Just look at the checkboxes! They're all checked! Fund me!

[Frozen In Ice]

Gamasutra published an interesting and in-depth analysis of the hit platformers of the past 10 years.

http://gamasutra.com/features/20060804/boutros_01.shtml


Thank you for the link. Very interesting reading and I printed important portions for further review, not to mention to use as reference material. Have a great weekend! :)