Random game idea - turn based Roguelike/Atari 2600 Adventure hybrid

Like many, I was enchanted by Atari VCS Adventure, but at the time I had no idea how to program it on my VIC-20. However, I have since realized that even slow BASIC could have done the job, using turn based Roguelike movement instead of arcade style action.

So, you have 8 keys for directional movement, and SPACE to act as the fire button (which lets go of an object). Running into an object grabs it. Unlike the original, all objects are a single character tile in size, and all movement is aligned to the character grid.

Gameplay revolves around grabbing a weapon in the direction it will be needed in, or dropping the weapon and guiding enemies to run into it. Different weapon types are:

SWORD - Like the original Adventure sword. It can be used any number of times.

DAGGER - Unlike the sword, pressing SPACE throws the dagger rather than just dropping it.

SHURIKEN - Like dagger, but it can only hit one enemy and then it disappears

Another aspect is light management, similar to the C64 game Tenebra. You can grab and drop torches, which affects where you can and can't see enemies and objects.

I've got so many ideas and stuff I haven't been posting, so I just felt like posting a random one.

#retrogaming #gamedevelopment #gamedesign

Vangauntlet - game idea for forced scrolling Gauntlet clone

A game idea I've been kicking around is a hybrid of Gauntlet and (NES) Section Z, with a bit of (TRS-80) Sea Dragon ... basically a Gauntlet clone but with a difference. The game uses forced scrolling, like Section Z. Some levels scroll very slowly, so you must endure attacks with no option to quickly rush to the exit. Some levels scroll very fast, so you can barely do much more than dodge.

Most levels scroll at medium rates, which puts pressure on you to navigate the maze and push through or around enemies to keep up. This radically alters the feeling of the action. Also, you buy power ups with treasure, so you really need to learn how to harvest treasure from each level efficiently. (You can replay levels, but each play halves the amount of treasure available.)

Some other ideas to mix things up:

There can be any number of enemies on screen, but only 6 of them move at a time. This introduces a "speed up" factor I really like. Also, the speed of enemies depends on their strength:

GREEN = 3 hit points, slow speed
YELLOW = 2 hit points, medium speed
RED = 1 hit point, fast speed

So, it can make a lot of sense to try and dodge around strong enemies to try and get the generator first. Or to just try and bypass as many enemies as you can and concentrate on grabbing treasure.

#C64 #GameDevelopment #GameDesign

A Math Based Personality For Games

#games #softwaredevelopment #animation #gamedesign #mathematics #hackaday
posted by pod_feeder_v2

Hey everyone, I’m #newhere. I’m a #transfem who is interesed in #boardgames, #lgbtq, #gamedesign, and #python.

Pepper&Carrot Fate Accelerated request for help

I'm looking for folks who have expert Fate Accelerated eyes (and a
passing familiarity with the comic Pepper&Carrot at
https://peppercarrot.com/) to take a look at
an incredibly rough-draft of an RPG that I've been building for
Pepper&Carrot using Fate Accelerated. You can view the game
rules and look at
the source and issue tracker on
Framagit.

What I am looking for: 1) Does the magic system fit the world described?
Magic in Hereva is plentiful, and is essentially our Physics. It is
cheap but requires Rea, which is the effort into making a spell work. I
wanted to reflect that in the magic system, so I'm hoping that came
across.

2) Do the Stunts make sense for the world described?

3) What else should be added in the core book? I'm hoping to create a
book that folks who are familiar and unfamiliar with both Pepper&Carrot
and Fate Accelerated can pick up and play. There's obvious issues with
the layout and issues with the ordering of chapters, and missing content
related to creatures and what to do once in this world, but with this
scaffolding in place what more would you like to explore in this world?

Please feel free to ping me here, on the framagit repo, or via the email
address on my About page.

Thank you for reading this far, and for your indulgence in helping an
amateur designer with low Fate experience get better at this. :)

http://decafbad.net/2021/08/31/pepper-carrot-fate-accelerated-request-for-help/

#misc #Adayinthelife #Fate #GameDesign #RolePlayingGames

Games as work

I was recently browsing Pocket when an article caught my eye. The title
"All Work and No
Play"
grabbed my attention. The article mashes two perspectives together. The
first is about plight of game designers who are working untold hours for
low pay and no job security, and the games that these developers are
creating. The second is about the types of games they're producing. The
more interesting perspective for me is about the games that are
produced, though this is not to say that the low pay / long hours of the
developers is any less important.

The article is a review of the book Press
Reset
which deals with the stories and situations of various video game
developers and the studios that have collapsed around them. The article
posits that much of the games of the 21st century are reflections of
those who have created them, and the games that they're creating feel
like extensions of 21st century work. This is interesting because I've
felt that many of the games (video games, board games, etc.) hew close
to the tasks of work. Worker placement games have a feeling of managing
little meeples and directing them to be in the right place and the right
time in order to get scant resources for creating an economic engine.
We've turned our play into an extension of work. The rewards are victory
points, or score or some other trifle. Many games have an in-game
currency where you can purchase different items to customize your
experience so you can perform better in the game or add a minimum of
personalization to your character.

This line of inquiry into games and game design makes me think about the
games that we've had over the past two decades. It's also giving me
another perspective on why I've bounced off of many of the newer board
games and haven't taken to a whole lot of video games as of late: they
just feel like more work.

Definitely some areas to think about. More to come.

http://decafbad.net/2021/08/07/games-as-work/

#misc #Adayinthelife #VideoGames #GameDesign #Rants

Obstacles in games

I've been thinking a bit about how obstacles are portrayed in games.

Picture if you will a locked door. It's an older door. There is a door
mat in front of the door. How do you get in?

This door puzzle shows up in several text adventures (I first
encountered it in one of the Zork games from Infocom, if memory serves,
though I might have read about it in a review of Deadline). What quickly
becomes apparent is that the game is relying on several key things. The
first of which is that you can't break down the door, no matter how hard
you try. The second is that if you look in the keyhole you'll notice
it's blocked. The third is that the game hopefully presented you with
the opportunity to grab a letter opener.

It also requires you to have an idea what type of door and lock you're
dealing with. My great grandmother had these doors. The locking
mechanism used a Skeleton
Key. If you left the key in
the hole then someone could see that it was obstructed.

The designers of the puzzle devised that you could get into a locked
room by sliding the doormat under the door. Once it was in place you
could use the letter opener to move the key out of the hole and onto the
mat. Once the key hit the mat you could carefully pull the mat and get
the key. Voila! You can now open the door.

I decided to try this with my great grandma's locks. Sure enough, it
worked. I felt so clever that I knew how to defeat these locks once and
for all (assuming I had a doormat, a letter opener, and a skeleton key
lock with a key carelessly left in it).

Clever puzzle? Sure, but there's a few flaws with it.

The first is it assumes familiarity with the locks of this era. I
happened to have access to this lock so I could demonstrate for myself
that it worked. That was over 40 years ago. I doubt that anyone today
looking at that puzzle would even think to try this puzzle. Today's
locks don't offer such an easy way of defeating them.

Worse, what happens if the door remains locked? Most times it means that
the character doesn't get access to whatever is behind that door. Unless
they figure out the correct incantation of words or actions they remain
blocked from gaining access. At some point the door becomes less of an
obstacle and more of a frustrating impediment to progressing in the
game. It's even worse if the rest of the game is locked behind that
door. Sorry, but you must have door knowledge and a letter opener to
unlock this content.

I can also say that the locks I encountered weren't anything special.
You probably could pick it with the letter opener or bash the door hard
enough to gain access. The solution to the puzzle would make the player
feel clever, but only after they figured out what the game designer was
trying to achieve.

Thing is, it didn't add anything to the story. The only things that I
got out of it was a chance to play with my great grandmother's locks and
an anecdote to tell other folks.

Many games mistake locked doors, locked chests, and obstacles as
gameplay, but if they only serve to keep the player out unless there's
certain conditions that are met I wonder if they're really serving their
purpose. In GUMSHOE any
clue that is related to the investigation is automatically granted to
the players in the interest of keeping the story moving. So if you
happen to be on the wrong side of a door and there's a core clue behind
it the system allows you to use your investigative abilities to route
around it. Perhaps that means the door can be easily picked, or the wood
is slightly rotten, or you now know the name of the person who has the
key. It offers a more rich experience than doing one thing in order to
overcome the obstacle.

Point being that stalling progress in order to figure out a puzzle isn't
terribly interesting. As game designers we tend to forget that the
obstacles in the story are only interesting if the characters can route
around them. If the player isn't able to deduce what needs to happen in
order to get around an obstacle then perhaps the character can have some
knowledge that the player lacks. (e.g.: Kayleigh may never have seen a
skeleton key door, but intrepid reporter Vivienne Sinclair may have
opened more than a few doors with this little trick.

"I made significant progress in this game" is way more interesting than
"I finally got the damn door opened". Let's give the players more tools
to have their characters be successful.

http://decafbad.net/2021/07/11/obstacles-in-games/

#misc #Adayinthelife #GameDesign #RolePlayingGames