Game Design Lessons

GDL – Peggle

Peggle is a popular puzzle/action game for the PC and Xbox Live Arcade. It’s certainly aimed at the casual game market, with bright colours and cheerful sounds, but there’s plenty of playability for more hardcore gamers (if they can get over the sugar).

The basic premise of the game is to remove all of the orange pegs on the board by dropping a ball from the top of the screen. It’s similar to Japanese Pachinko games, but the pegs disappear after being hit. There are also green pegs that grant super-powers, such as multi-ball or pinball-like flippers.

There are no official sales statistics, but the PC version has been downloaded over 50 million times ^[1], and the Xbox Live Arcade has made at least 100,000 sales ^[2]. Clearly the folks at PopCap are doing something right.

Try Peggle Deluxe

References

[1] — Peggle Finds A New Home

[2] — XBLA: The Road To NPD – Xbox Live Arcade Sales For March 2009

[3] — Why poor people win the lottery

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Game Design Lessons – Halo

Few games in recent years have generated quite as much buzz as the Halo series. The first two games were critically acclaimed by the gaming press, and combined they have sold over thirteen million copies worldwide [1]. That’s a lot of sales, so Bungie must be doing something right.

With Halo 3 just around the corner, it seems appropriate to take a look at the game that started it all.

As with other entries in the Game Design Lessons series, this article is split into three different sections:

• What’s good
• What’s not so good
• What can be learnt

Before I start, I should warn you that this article contains spoilers about the plot. If you haven’t played Halo before and don’t want the story spoilt, you should bookmark this and read it another time ;)

What’s good

A well paced story and gameplay

Whatever your opinion of the story’s quality may be, it’s still fair to say that Halo managed to deliver it at a well balanced pace. Details are revealed at the right speed to keep the player’s interest, and there are a few twists and turns along the way.

There are still plenty of “hands off” cutscenes, but there are also set-pieces that the player will encounter whilst playing, such as the Covenant boarding the Pillar of Autumn or the appearance of a certain parasite.

Gameplay wise, the first level takes player’s through all the basic controls without putting them in any real danger. By the time the action heats up, all of the fundamentals such as melee attacks and grenade throwing have been introduced. There are are a few “press button X” messages on the screen, but for the most part this introductory tutorial is unobtrusive. This is A Good Thing.

Difficulty levels that are fun AND challenging

The simplest way to make a game harder is to either make the player weaker, or to make the enemies stronger. A complex method is to make the AI characters smarter, so that they’re able to make better decisions when attacking.

Halo took the latter approach, and although the enemies on tougher levels have increased health, they also display more complex AI patterns. Grunts will throw more grenades, Elites will seek better cover and Jackels will take down your shields more often. It makes the game much harder, but not in a frustrating way. It’s never fun to be beaten by computer opponents, but it’s not so bad when you feel it deserved to beat you.

Limited choice

It seems odd to mention limited choice as A Good Thing. It’s a risky move that doesn’t always work, but when it does it can add an extra layer to the game.

In Halo there are seven weapons and two grenades. Not only is this quite a small arsenal for an FPS, but you’re only allowed to carry two weapons at a time. On paper this sounds like a horrible, horrible idea, but in practice it works quite well. Choosing the correct weapons for any situation becomes more important, and power weapons almost seem more powerful because you have to choose whether to sacrifice your weapon slot for them. Things get even more interesting at higher difficulty levels as ammunition becomes hard to come by and every dropped weapon counts.

The same lack of choice works for the enemies, too. The Covenant forces are made of Grunts, Elites, Jackels and Hunters. That’s it. What makes this interesting is the way these different races interact when fighting. Grunts will hang around with Elites, so stick a grenade to the big guy and you’ll either wipe out the whole squad or send the Grunts scurrying away.

The Flood

The Flood are introduced midway through the game, via a series of atmospheric cut-scenes shot from the perspective of a rather unfortunate marine. This sets the mood for rest of the level, which can be summed up as “we didn’t want to do that”.

Although they’re effectively space zombies (space + zombies = awesome), the dynamic of the game changes once they appear. Tactics that would take down a squad of Covenant are rendered useless against enemies that will quite happily fight with half their face missing. Eventually you end up fighting Flood, Covenant and Sentinels at the same time, and the choice over weapons and tactic becomes vital to your survival.

It concentrates on the fun

Jamie Griesemer, Halo 2′s design lead, is quoted as saying that Halo has thirty seconds of fun [2]. It might seem like a negative observation, but it’s an important observation. Considering the size of modern games, distilling the core elements into something so simple can help a lot with design. If you know what your players want to do, you can make sure they get plenty of chances to do it.

What’s not so good

Repetitious levels

The last few levels of the game take place in the same locations from the first half of the game. In some respects this approach works, as revisiting the old places with new enemies and strategies is fun, but at the same time trudging through the same levels isn’t quite as exciting as exploring new places.

Corridors

Once you’ve had a taste of speeding o’er hills and vales on a Warthog, it’s a little disappointing to be stuck back in a typical FPS corridor level. Although it helps to mix up the game a little, a little more diversity in the surroundings would have been nice. Both the Forerunner and Covenant structures are repetitious and visually quite sterile, which makes navigation quite difficult.

Inconsistent checkpoints

There’s nothing more frustrating than beating a particularly difficult part of a level, only to die and and have to repeat it. The checkpoint system in Halo solves this problem some of the time, but not always. Sometimes checkpoints aren’t saved for some time, and you’ll end up repeating huge parts of a level.

The Library

If there’s one level of the game that sums up all of these problems, it’s “The Library”. The level design is repetitious, the scenery is somewhat dull and difficult to navigate and checkpoints will often fail, meaning you’ll have to do that really tough bit all over again.

What can be learnt

Getting beaten is fine

Nobody plays games to lose, but winning all the time isn’t much fun either. Victory is always more rewarding when you feel that you overcame the odds to achieve it.

Finding the right balance of difficulty and fun is a challenge, especially when you have to cater for all abilities. Remember, some of your players may never have played anything else before, so don’t expect them to have any idea of what they’re doing. On the flip-side, some people may have played a million other games before, so they won’t want to sit through a 2 hour tutorial.

If you’re going to offer different difficulty levels, think about doing more than just changing time limits and health meters. It takes more work, but advanced players will appreciate the extra challenge.

You don’t need a million choices

Starting a new game design can be a daunting experience, especially as every ”triple A” game is usually touted as revolutionising the way we play. What’s important is to give the player choice.

For example, only being able to carry two weapons sounds like a bad idea, but what it actually does is let players choose from a combination. This added layer of choice makes encounters more interesting. After all, if you can always carry a rocket launcher, why worry about what you’ll use to clear the next area?

You’re allowed to promote your game

Microsoft has a lot riding on the success of the Halo series, and it shows in the way they advertise the game. Now I realise indies don’t exactly have the same budget as MS, but there are plenty of other ways to advertise your games.

It could even be argued that indie developers have more options available as they don’t have to worry about the restrictions faced by larger companies, such as keeping a corporate image or trying to look cool and failing miserably. Social sites like MySpace, Facebook and YouTube have given independent developers a whole new platform for spreading the word and creating a community of fans.

Remember: don’t be ashamed to promote your game. Marketing can sometimes feel “dirty”, but if you truly believe your game is entertaining and worth playing, then it is worth taking the time and effort to promote it.

Put your heart into it

Whatever your opinion of the Halo series, there can be little doubt that the Bungie team really care about their games.

When you’re making a game, it can feel like you have to have a certain image in order to be accepted. Keeping your game sterile will only hurt it in the long term. Fans don’t tell their friends about games that have “this awesome 16.7 million colour palette and 10,000 polygon models”. They tell them about awesome it was when they drove a Warthog off a cliff onto a group of Jackels , or how funny it was when a grunt shouted “not again” after being stuck with a plasma grenade. 

Don’t sanitise your ideas because you think they won’t appeal to the masses. The personality you give your games can become their strongest selling point.

Find the fun and stick to it

It’s tempting to keep adding features to games so that you can add more bullet points to your sales pitch. All you really need to do is find the fun parts and make more of them. This doesn’t mean you should repeat the same bits over and over, but don’t be afraid to use the same elements in different situations.

A good example of this is the turtles in Mario – it’s fun to jump on them, but a whole game of turtle jumping probably wouldn’t be much fun. To make things more interesting, they’re placed in different situations. Sometimes they fly, so you need to jump on them to avoid falling to Certain Death, whereas other times you need to jump on them to clear a line of enemies blocking the way.

Find out what parts of your game design are fun, and make sure the player gets plenty of chances to experience this fun.

That’s all for now

Halo is not a perfect game by any means (I’m yet to play one), but there are still many lessons to learn from its design and storytelling. Being an independent developer is exciting and liberating, and whilst we may not have the same resources at our disposal as larger development houses, we can still learn from their successes and failures to make our games even better. 

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Footnotes

[1] According to WikiPedia, Halo:Combat Evolved has sold over five million copies and Halo 2 has sold over eight million copies worldwide.

[2] This was originally said in a documentary packaged with the Halo 2 Collector’s Edition. There’s an interview with members of the Bungie staff, including Jamie, at Edge Online.

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GDL – Frontier: Elite II

As its title suggests, Frontier: Elite II is the sequel to the hugely popular “Elite”, a game first released in 1984 for the BBC Micro. Elite was a space game that blended several genres together to create a unique and compelling experience, and Frontier built upon this solid foundation. Several new features were added, and although the game received its fair share of criticism, overall it enjoyed plenty of success.

With rumours of another sequel to Frontier floating around the Internet, now seems like a great time to look back at a true classic from the 16-bit computer era.

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GDL – Harvest Moon

The easiest way to describe Harvest Moon is as a farming game. However, it’s executed in a different way from regular “sim” style games such as Sim City or Transport Tycoon. In Harvest Moon you taken on the role of the farmer in an almost RPG way, and you run around planting crops and doing most of the work yourself.

There is also more of a focus on story and relationships, and there is a town full of people that you can befriend, and several lucky people that you can marry.

It’s a quite a simple concept in essence, but layers of extras are added on to create a strangely compelling game. So what game design lessons can we learn from it?

The Good Bits…

Freedom

There is a huge amount of freedom in the game, much like the more traditional sim games. Very little of the game or story is forced onto you, which gives the player a lot more control over how they progress.

Players can earn money with crops, livestock, mining or even just rummaging in the mountains for fruit and mushrooms to sell. Some routes are easier than others, there’s really no set way the game should be played.

The social aspects of the game are also optional, and you can choose to befriend everyone in town and get married or stay in your farm like a hermit.

Discovery

The freedom given to you also fosters a sense of discovery, as there are little stories hidden away in the game that you’re free to discover at your own pace. There are a few cut-scenes to illustrate important events, but the majority of the story can be discovered entirely at the player’s pace.

Simplified mechanics

Some sim games can dig a little too deep into micro-management, but Harvest Moon gets it just about right. You plant seeds, water them and then pick the crops to sell. There are no complex menus and dialogs about setting prices or managing transportation. This helps to keep the gameplay light enough to be enjoyed more casually.

Relationships

Being nice has an effect on the game, and can have rewards for the player. Some townsfolk may give you items, but some also open up new areas of the map.

A large example of this are the characters known as the “Harvest Sprites”. There are seven of them in total, and if you’re nice enough to them they will help out around your farm. You need to give them gifts in order to gain their friendship so that they’ll help. You’ll get bonus “friendship” points if you remember their birthday, and you can also wrap the gift for additional points.

The not so good bits…

Limited customisation

In any RPG, it’s beneficial to give the player a sense of ownership of the character. Very little about your farmer can be changed, and a few additions such as house decorating or changing clothes would have gone a long way to making the adventure seem more individual.

Notebook

I grew up with text adventures, when making maps and writing things down was part of the game. However, there’s a lot more complexity in modern games and keeping track of everything can get quite difficult, especially in an RPG.

The game does keep track of all your recipes, and has a library with shipping prices and crop growth times, but there is still a lot of information left out. A “Smart” notebook that fills in facts as you go could be useful, especially as not everyone wants to fill a Moleskine with pages of notes about a farming game.

What can we learn?

Keep it simple

Always be on the lookout to simplify things. Instead of adding new, complex features, see what you can remove until you’re left with the core elements of what makes you game fun.

This does depend on your target market though. For example, a flight simulator aimed at hardcore fans won’t be popular if you simplify it to a few key presses. However, most games can do without some of the more complicated elements.

Keep it data driven

On a slightly more technical note, take advantage of data driven game techniques. There is a lot of content in Harvest Moon, with around 20 different crops and hundreds of recipes. Coding each of these into a class would be a nightmare, so always be on the lookout for ways to make your code more data driven.

Have faith in your players

There is often the temptation to railroad players into playing the game exactly as you want it. This can either be to avoid bugs cropping up, or it could be because you want the player to experience the game as you designed it.

If you’ve ever watched someone play a game you’ve created, you’ll quickly find they’ll do things in a different way than planned. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Give your players some tools and an environment to play in, and watch what happens.

You don’t have to make your game completely open-ended, but look for ways to let the game take care of itself instead of events being heavily scripted. An added side-effect to this is that it gives a lot more replay value, and it can also generate those “You’ve got to see this!” moments for players.

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Harvest Moon at Amazon.com

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Game Design Lessons – Beyond Good & Evil

Introduction

This article is part of the “Game Design Lessons” series, and is an in-depth look at the videogame “Beyond Good & Evil”.

This is a joint project between myself and my brother (over at Prosody.co.uk). My articles will take a more analytical approach, whereas his will focus on the game from a player’s point of view.

You can read the other half of this article at: “Player POV – Beyond Good & Evil“.

This article is also part of the October edition of the “Carnival of Gamers“, which you can find at “Man Bytes Blog“.

What’s good about it?

Intuitive controls

There are two parts of the game where the optimised controls shine through.

Firstly, the controls have been optimised for analogues sticks on console controllers, which works rather well. Menus are built in a circular fashion, and the text entry sections utilise a “letter spiral” system instead of the usual keyboard emulation.

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, there aren’t hundreds of key presses to remember to perform simple actions. Jumping is automatic, and most actions either require the use of the “action” button or are performed by walking into the object.

The status display stays hidden for most of the game, and only appears when the information will be of use to the player. For example, if you’re standing next to a switch, it will appear and highlight the “action” button.

It can seem like the game is doing a little too much at times, but it does save a lot of frustration and means the player can focus on moving through the story.

Guides the player

As you gain new skills and equipment, they’re explained to you by your holographic assistant, “Secundo”. There are generally only a few new button presses to remember, and they fit with the overall set-up of the game. For example, the run button also acts as the “dash” button on your hovercraft.

Context sensitive help is shown where appropriate, but you’re not overwhelmed with information. The UI prefers to stay out of the player’s way, which is always a good thing.

A common presentation theme

The whole game has a very cinematic feel to it, which is particularly evident in the way certain elements are designed. As mentioned earlier, the UI is only shown when required, so the screen is generally free of clutter and has a more movie-like feel.

Items are explained by a holographic assistant instead of just appearing from nowhere, and using items is handled by the small pouch that you carry with you (called a “S.A.C.”). The user interface is styled to be the same as the one you’d use on the S.A.C., in a similar fashion to the watch in GoldenEye. It’s not implemented quite as well, but it works nonetheless. 

A nice touch is that all items are “digitalised” and then stored in the SAC, which answers the usual question in games of “where do they keep all their stuff?”

Yes Doom Guy with a chainsaw stuffed in your pants, I’m looking at you.

Hints at the future

The game gives you an idea of where you’ll be going further into the story, as well as what equipment you’ll be using. It’s always good to show the player some of the rewards they’ll get further in the game, and games like Metroid do this particularly well.

A well paced story

Although it’s a little bit short, the story is well paced and delivered in an interesting way. Instead of being told about important events by non-playable characters, you often discover things for yourself and have to report them to others. This helps the player to feel that they’re an important part of the story, instead of just an observer.

The game world has depth

Part of the game involves photographing every species on the planet, and although it might not seem appealing it does add depth and credibility to the game world.

Despite advances in technology, a lot games have levels that can seem dull and lifeless. The addition of animals and insects to the world of Hillys really fleshes it out, and adds to the impression that you’re living on a different planet.

One particular nice touch is the transition from night to day, which changes which animals appear. Watching the sun set and seeing fireflies appear adds an extra dimension to the game world.

The non-playable characters also discuss elements of the story in their groups, and you’ll see events broadcast on TV and displayed in magazines. It’s not particularly complex, but it’s still fun to see the same event talked about in completely different ways by the media, especially when you were the one that took the original photographs!

What’s not so good?

Pet Peeve – Mixing voice acting and text-only interaction

It’s not exactly a glaring design flaw, but I find nothing kills the effort and atmosphere of voice acting quicker than mixing in text-only dialogue. This only occurs when you’re interacting with certain NPCs, and it’s by no means a critical flaw. It’s just a shame that voice acting is used throughout the game and left out of other parts.

The Flying Death Laser

There are quite a lot of stealth sections in the game, and a few of them make use of a most wonderful contraption – the flying death laser. If it spots you, even for a split-second, it will kill you instantly. Although the game only sends you back to the start of the section, it’s extremely annoying and rather cheap. Nothing says “You must complete this section our way” more than “Do it another way and die”.

Too much diversity in gameplay elements?

There are a lot of different gameplay elements in Beyond Good & Evil, including: racing, fighting, photography, stealth, air hockey and Flying Death Laser avoidance. When you’ve got that many different styles, you can’t really give each element as much focus as it deserves.

Photography isn’t as in-depth as Pokemon Snap. Simply take a picture, and as long as it’s in focus and framed well enough you’ll get the same reward. It might have been more interesting if you were rewarded for more interesting shots (such as the animal doing something interesting), and if you could go back and re-photograph an animal if you found a better action of bigger colony. It’s very much “take picture and move on”, which is a shame.

The same goes for the stealth sections. Although you can generally sneak or fight, the character isn’t really tailored too much toward stealth. Whereas Splinter Cell gives you the light meters and dynamic shadows, BG&E gives you a different camera angle and a few objects to hide behind.

Whilst this lack of equipment does help reinforce the feeling that you are a reporter sneaking where you’re not wanted, it can make things frustrating. It gives the game more of an “action stealth” feel, which isn’t a bad thing in itself, but it does give the impression that stealth isn’t as important in the game as it actually is.

So what can we learn?

Gradually introduce new items

Try not to swamp the player with tonnes of equipment and controls at the beginning of the game. Even if you want to introduce them all in the first level, try to do it gradually and stick to a common control theme to make things simpler.

Polish adds depth

Polish is not just a case of cleaning up graphics and adding shiny menus, but is really the process of adding depth and substance to the game. This doesn’t have to be anything particularly complex, and even a few swaying plants and buzzing flies can make the level feel much less clinical.

Tease the player

I don’t mean flashing “YOU SUCK!” on the screen when the player dies, but hinting at what is to come. Try not to give too much away, but let them know that they will be rewarded with cool things if they continue playing.

Don’t punish the player (too much)

People play games to have fun, so don’t punish them for every little mistake they make. If they do make a mistake, give them a way to undo it without too much pain. For example, if you set off the alarms in the stealth sections you can generally hide until the fuss has died down, and then start again.

Unless there’s a Flying Death Laser, of course. 

Be careful when mixing gameplay elements

If you’re planning to mix different styles of gameplay, such as stealth and action, be very careful how you do it. The more styles you add, the simpler you’ll have to make each them in order to keep the gameplay balanced.

Would you like to learn more?

You can read the other half of this article at: Player POV – Beyond Good & Evil. It takes a look at the game from the player’s perspective, and looks at how the different game elements fit together to create an immersive and enjoyable experience.

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