I mean skilltests as in “making the player demonstrate competence in certain areas”.
E.g. (in no particular order):
Counterstrike: clicking on heads very quickly, map knowledge, team communication, tactics, experience with handling the guns, nerves of steel for clutches, situational awareness, etc.
Dark Souls: timing, patience, learning move-sets, quick dodge-roll reactions, knowledge of mechanics and synergies of different things, keeping cool under stress, situational awareness, proper risk assessment, etc.
(please don’t argue on whether those are super accurate for those two games, I just wanted to make clear what I mean with “skilltests”).
So, when you design a new PC game, where and how in the process do you decide what skills to test? I imagine the choice whether you want to support gamepads or not should come first, because it puts limits on what players are able to perform in the game?
introduce a challenge that requires player to develop given skill. i.e., a wave of zombies requires player to use spear pokey skill and smart movement to manage crowd without getting overrun
play test to ensure majority of gamers develop given skill to proficiency – play testing ensures you allocate enough time/opportunity for practice of new skill. You also want to make sure there is just enough time to develop the skill, but not too much to develop boredom from repetition. i.e., if most players can manage the zombie crowds without getting overrun after completing two “rooms” with a zombie crowd, you can move on to…
“boss” challenge that takes given skill and requires player to demonstrate mastery of it. i.e., a bigger crowd of perhaps tougher zombies.
with player feeling triumphant, introduce additional skill, rinse and repeat. i.e., now a new enemy is introduced.
or did you mean, at what phase of planning, prototype, or development do you decide this stuff? I suppose that depends on the dev and the purpose of the game. For me, this is the most essential core of a game, and so it’s what I think of first and build outwards from there. However, you learn new things, run into problems, and so this kind of thing, like anything else, is subject to change at any point throughout development.
Yes, this one. And I’m thinking of a more minimalist gamedesign. Take for example Devil Daggers and Superhot, both are essentially minimalist first person shooters, but they test extremely different skills, and in the case of Superhot I’m not 100% convinced they made the right calls on what skills to test.
Playing it I found myself frustrated a bit that my traditional shooter skills are almost useless there, and the dominant strategies are kind of boring (e.g. wait till enemies stand still and shoot center of mass instead of trying to do headshots on running targets because they can change their movement vector so abruptly that you can’t predict their path well enough to get good at leading shots precisely and there is no point to it anyway).
I’m thinking about making something very streamlined and minimal like Devil Daggers, but I feel like I should have an idea on what skills I do want to test, before I start thinking about anything else, but I have no idea what criteria to take to make that choice.
E.g. with my now-abandoned mech game project I ended up (not through planning, but by bumbling aimlessly through development like an idiot) primarily testing the skill to adapt to a non-standard control scheme and micro-manage 9 different weapon turrets at once. That was a bad idea in hindsight, because that’s something many people will likely be frustrated with and I hadn’t thought about or left space for more sensible choices for skill tests. It was a dead-end design imho.
Devil Daggers is almost more about “management” than reflexes and precision. It matters a great deal at what time you are at what place and in what order you dispatch targets, and past a certain point (like a minute or so) in any run, the intensity of opposition will be so high, that you have not one second of respite till you die. Even keeping that level of attention up for just 2 minutes is quite draining, and you always die in the end, it’s just a question of beating your own highscore time.
There are many upsides to that kind of design, like you will always find it challenging and you will often experience the exciting moments close to your breaking point where you barely survive but any misstep will be your last. But you’re also missing out on some good old fashioned catharsis for “beating a level”, like you’d get in Superhot or Hotline Miami. All these games have instant-death from 1 enemy/projectile, and build up towards a catharsis moment of some sorts, but in DD they are not predetermined and it’s totally possible a player reaches a point where they will no longer be able to beat their previous best. Last I checked I was in the upper 10 or 20% of the global leaderboard with my time, and I know I won’t get much higher, because I’m just not good enough at keeping calm and focused.
But if lets say for example I’m making an FPS game where a level takes 5 seconds to beat, but you’ll need to land 7 precise headshots in that time and any failure means you have to start over, that’s a skilltest that a chunk of players might find enjoyable, but a bigger chunk likely will never be able to get past…
In games like Deus Ex or Dishonored I save-scum like hell and sometimes I’ll plan “ok, I’ll do this and this and this in one quick and smooth sequence”, and then try it till I manage to pull it off once and have done something cool at the end. I like that kind of challenge, think it would make an interesting core game-loop for a standalone game, if the time to reset is as quick as in the other games I’ve mentioned, but I don’t know how to decide if it actually is a good idea.
“Build it and have many people playtest” seems like “How can I force hindsight, with a massive time-investment?”.
There must be some logic criteria to this. The question “do I need controller support” is a good first one I think, because that would significantly lower the ability of players to perform tasks like precision shooting in short time segments. I believe it must be one of the reasons so many console shooters have some form of bullet-time mechanic.
Devil Daggers is pretty damn hard and unforgiving, but it doesn’t taunt low-skill players in the same way that a game does, that has 20 levels, and you can’t even get past the first one. It’s always about beating your previous best.
“Build it and have many people playtest” seems like “How can I force hindsight, with a massive time-investment?”.
That’s pretty much the gist of it.
You don’t want to barrage players with tutorials on a lot of mechanics without them being able to try and practice.
set it to where you think it would be good, and let your target audience play it.
do they think its too hard to do what they need to? spread it out and give them more time with each aspect
do they find it boring? make the game shorter
all a “game” is, is learning how to play, getting stuff added that they have to become proficient enough to pass, repeat.
if there is nothing to learn, and nothing to get better at, its just a slog, and needs to be a shorter game to where they learn things continually
Maybe your problem is one I can’t understand because I am new to game dev and I only do art, but it seems to me that you are trying to wrap your head around a plethora of gameplay possibilities and then pick and choose what you want and then run thought experiments to see if it would be fun. Seems confusing.
I suppose you need to identify the core of the game, like summarize it in one sentence, and then all of the gameplay design and art should exemplify that core statement about the game. Like, if my game is about growing an impressive flower garden, and it’s a casual mobile game, I am going to make sure that the gameplay design encourages lots of consequence free experimentation, the art is going to be very colorful of course, and there really won’t be any way to screw things up. There maybe has to be some small amount of waiting, just to build enough suspense while the player waits to see what their garden looks like after all the seeds grow and bloom.
Alternatively, if I want to play a game about a prisoner escaping a medieval prison, I may choose a FPS, narrow FOV, tailor gameplay to punish mistakes severely, restrict player movement to keep them from being able to out-manuever enemies easily, restrict saves, etc. Everything about this game design works to make player feel hopeless and insecure. But if I want the game to be about making the player feel like a badass warrior, then maybe I allow the save scumming, increase the action, make the player faster and more able to destroy hordes of enemies, and I can still work with high difficulty but do so by challenging the player to kill more and faster, rather than forcing player to skulk like a rat and fear little noises.
I think, approaching your game design thought experiments this way, its may be easier as you define the goal first and then the gameplay mechanics follow naturally.
“Testing skill” is a strange way to put this. It sounds like you’re talking about gameplay itself.
In that case you train the player by starting with the gameplay at low difficulty (just one headshot with plenty of time) and increase that difficulty (multiple headshots, timing).
“testing skill” as in:
here is how to jump. jump over this log.
now jump over this hole
uh oh, its a big hole now, here is how to double jump
If you haven’t given enough time for the player to be comfortable jumping, the double jump would be rage quit worthy.
or late game:
You’ve learned the basic control system, weapon system, and elemental modifiers, now put it all together for the main boss battle.
The entire game is giving the player new tools, and the player getting good enough at each of these tools to overcome an arbitrarily difficult outcome.
the part your asking about is the arbitrary part. if im reading correctly, youre asking “how quick will players learn this and that to move on, and what would the bar be for “not good enough””
this is best decided by your intended playerbase. you can guess all you want, but for data, you need that time investment to get a non-developer “hindsight”
a developer should be able to get past a 2d scroller without getting hit, because they know the enemies, the patters, the logic. a game is a lot more differenter for a player. they have to learn all this, you have to pace the game to a speed that your playerbase could reach with some practice.
edit: this might be a nevermind. on first read, I took it as eternal was questioning what “I” said and was reiterating what I was meaning with my post. this might still be some kind of beneficial, maybe not. oh well.
I see that I did a poor job explaining what exactly my problem is. I’ll give an example about painting: Typically people start with an idea for a subject, e.g. “I want to paint a pretty flower, because I like flowers”. When I still painted for my own amusement, I’d be more likely to say “I want to make a painting, because I like paintings - I don’t care what it’s about, I’ll figure that out along the way”. And then I’d throw random shapes and colors at the digital canvas till I start to “see” something in the chaos, and then I’d just run with it and make that the subject of the painting. I cared more about the abstract qualities of it, but didn’t want to go fully abstract. And that does indeed work, I’ve painted many pictures that way.
And with games it’s kinda similar for me: I like games, but I’m much more interested in abstract/aesthetic or even technical aspects of them, than I am in the story.
I have identified pure gamedesign as my weakest skill, and now I’m trying to come up with a new vision of a game, that is “gameplay first”, because I get so easily distracted by every other part of development (except story maybe).
I’d like to be working on something again, where I’m convinced that it’s a good idea to make it and that it has a good chance to be genuinely enjoyed by a decent amount of people. I need that “vision of a better future” so that I can feel like I’m moving towards that when I’m working on that game. And I hope to not again hit a brickwall on a gamedesign aspects late in development, by putting in some extra “critical analysis time” upfront.
Also how could I be expecting people to get excited about something, that I can’t even get excited about myself? And I’m pretty jaded already, just like many gamers, so I’m finding it hard to come up with an idea that I don’t think is pointless to persue shortly after having it.
Yeah, that’s kind of it.
That’s really good advice, but I haven’t even found or decided that core yet. I guess that’s really part of why I made the thread in the first place. How do I pick that core?
If I had a goal that would indeed help, but what if I don’t?
Yes, I am talking about gameplay. I don’t know how to phrase it better, and I’m open to suggestions.
I’m still at the 10000 feet overview perspective where I only look at the “game as a whole”, and how the difficulty curve is spread out over the gameplay is a detail by comparison. I do think about the “how hard is too hard” aspect though, because that can make certain mechanics and gamedesign choices more or less well suited for a game.
All the points raised about teaching players are very important though, and I did not think enough about “the first 2 hours” of a game concept in the past. Having it been spelled out so clearly to me made me think of doing a level-selection screen, that looks similar to the passive skill tree of path of exile:
You start with a linear progression that teaches basic controls, then branch of into separate lanes for different new aspects, and bring them back together at a point where you need to have finished all the prerequisite challenges to unlock the row of challenges where you need to put together the things that you learned in isolation. That would be a distilled version of a game, with most of the “immersion focused content” removed.
Though that still sounds like a poor ratio of dev-time to gameplay-time, compared to something like e.g. Devil Daggers. And I know from experience that I hate “manually making levels”, so anything that lends itself more to procedurally generated levels would be a big plus…
There’s got to be some kind of game you’ve never played but really want to. Even if its a minor change of something familiar.
I like nature documentaries a lot. I like to watch predators in action. So naturally, my big dream game ideas revolve around that.I grew up playing shooting games, and even though I don’t care about them much anymore, I still have a few ideas on how to change up the genre. I don’t play RPG’s too much anymore either, and yet I have a few ideas about the genre that a game idea could be centered around. Modern games are becoming more and more derivative. Gamers are always complaining about things being “watered-down.” I think now is a great time for small indies to explore completely new ideas, define entirely new genres, forget the hollywood blockbluster nonsense and give gamers what they are really asking for.
That’s where I get my inspiration from. Just my own personal interest and video game experience. So, boiled down, I have a few completely novel ideas based on non-video game interest, or I have ideas about how to alter or refine existing video game genres.
I think with a long term complex project, the throw-paint-at-the-canvas and see what happens probably isn’t very viable. I mean, to some degree with the prototyping, but I think you have to start with a solid vision.
Maybe it’s only my own nature to be contrarian, but I think a great place to find inspiration is looking at all that does not exist in the video game world. We have alien invasions, middle earth epics, tactical shooters, demolition derbys, city builders… there is a lot of ground already covered by video games, but there is much more that hasn’t been. Much of the natural world, which IMO is way more fascinating than anything ever dreamed up by mankind, is still totally unrepresented in games. Much of the worlds fascinating human cultures throughout history have not had their stories told in games. There is so much room for inspired ideas, but everybody is too afraid to break free from the usual tropes. Indies got to step it up!
Tons, but on a venn-diagram there’s no overlap with the much smaller bubble of “things that I actually could make on my own”.
True, but looking at my time-investments so far, and having 0 games to show for it, I’m thinking I need to go more along the lines of “go as close to straight up cloning something, as I can mentally bear”.
It sounds like you have your core. Put some shapes down, and decide what you wanna do with em. Game design is not very different than painting. Its art. Some people draw individual blades of grass first and superimpose a scene on it, some throw a bucket of paint at a canvas.
Get a capsule, put it in a scene, and develop a scene around it in your head. What does the capsule become. Now make it move accordingly. Make your environment around it. Give it a story.
You paint by studying a starting point.
You shouldn’t have a problem if you treat this the same.
Edit: this was being written during the posting of the last 2 posts.
I wouldn’t let that keep you from your dream games though. There is no way I can make my dream games alone, but even if it takes me 10 years of work to save money to hire the help I need, I’ll do that. I have shorter term plans, of course.
And who says you have to make your own games entirely? If finding inspired ideas isn’t your thing, why not work with other people on their projects? You may pick up inspiration along the way.
But I do obviously have problems with that approach. I’ve been doing that on and off since 2010 and nothing came from it (at least no finished or released game), I think it’s time for a different approach.
Short answer: I really don’t want to.
I’m not trying this since yesterday, I think I need to be more realistic on how far I can get alone / motivate myself. But I do have to give you credit, that you’ll probably get much farther than me, even though I have a headstart in art- and programming-experience. How you’ve been tackling the artist’s journey so far is impressive!
Here is a long story that will eventually make a simple point:
Before I joined the army, I had practiced brazilian jiu jitsu for about a year or so. Just enough to be a litlte more than a beginner. When I went to basic training, we did army combatives, which is just a watered down jiu jitsu. There was this team competition one day, where like two teams of six dudes went against each other all at once. I knew that nobody on the other team had much BJJ experience and that I should be able to beat any one of them one on one. However, even if I am a lot better than my opponent, it still takes some time to work a submission from them.
So I made a quick plan that I though would help our team win. When the timer started, I hung back and let my team go forward. I told them all to just tie somebody up, don’t try to beat them, just hold onto them and keep them from doing anything. I myself went after the weakest dude on the other team and submitted him as fast as I could. Then, I went around to each of my teammates holding onto the other team and it was easy to fish an arm or leg or neck out and make them tap. Within a few minutes we beat the other team without hardly breaking a sweat.
The moral of the story? I had a little bit of experience in BJJ, just enough to give me a small advantage, but by piggy backing on my team I was able to take out six guys in a few minutes. I used the other people as stepping stones, I didn’t waste time trying to do hard work myself.
About game art, I have no leverage in this field other than being an avid doodler in grade school. I have no training, and I’m not a particularly tech savvy person. Additionally, I suffer from prolonged bouts of anger. The only reason I’ve made any improvements is because of how much piggy backing I do from other people. There is some much free info available out there, you really don’t need to have any special talent. I don’t think so anyhow. I suppose you need ot be able to look closely and pay attention and focus for long periods of time, but that’s about it. The rest somebody else has already done the hard work on, and all you have to do is follow their lead.
Not sure what the cohesive point of all of that was, but maybe in your search for game design inspiration you may find that letting other people do the hard work and then stealing all the glory may be a good way to go? Just don’t describe it that way!