Intelligent Design

Zuma Blitz is a game of skill, speed and precision in which players must shoot balls at other like-colored balls with the objective of making clusters, thus making them disappear. Sometimes these balls will have bonuses on them, and eliminating them nets you the specified bonus.

Quick! Get those multipliers!

These bonuses disappear rather fast, which means that you have to act quick if you want to get those extra points. It also means that sometimes you spot a bonus, shoot a ball at it and watch it disappear before the shot reaches it.

So unfair!

Except it’s not. The game has the incredibly good sense of letting the bonus linger invisibly on the ball for a small period of time, so that the player will still get the bonus if it disappears while the shot is in mid-air – or if even if it it disappears just before the player takes the shot. The bonus might not be visible, but the audio and visual feedback remain.

No doubt that the spirit behind this mechanic is to be extremely forgiving with players in the social space. PopCap knows that there is no room in that space for unforgiving mechanics, and they clearly design their games (especially the Facebook versions) with that in mind. In turn the player, instead of feeling cheated, feels a sense of accomplishment for making the shot in the last possible second.

¡Quiero y tu mamá en pantaletas!

Let’s start with an exercise: imagine a game. It’s a card game. A card game you’re supposed to play in teams of 2 vs. 2, where points are wagered and each match, which consists of several independent games, is played to 24 points. A match can end in one game just as likely as it can end in 5, 8 or 15. It’s a game where cheating is allowed, and getting caught costs you points. It’s a game where you’re supposed to shout, where you’re allowed to curse your opponent’s whole ancestry, question his intelligence and mock his inability to beat you, bang your hands on the table and throw your cards face up when you’ve won a hand. It’s a game where the winner is the toughest, the smartest, the quickest and wisest. If you’re actually attempting this exercise, then most probably your imagination has imploded by now. Unless you’re from Venezuela or some other Latin American country – because in that case you know very well that I’m talking about Truco.

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I have been playing Henry Hatsworth for a while now, and have been somewhat enjoying it, though it definitely has its ups and downs. Something I cannot stand, however, is the starting screen.

Don’t put anything in your game that goes against the player’s wish to play. That’s a good rule to design by. And the very first thing you encounter when you turn Henry Hatsworth on seems to go against that.

It’s a very simple flaw: the start menu is located in the bottom DS screen, the one we are accustomed to interact with using the stylus. But for some reason the screen won’t take stylus input, so you must use the D-pad and buttons no navigate it. It looks like a minor detail, but the game definitely sends some mixed messages by not letting players interact with it in the most intuitive way.

The complete antithesis of this is Rhythm Heaven. That game is all about using the stylus to touch and flick, touch and flick. And the starting screen won’t even let you play them game unless you prove you can flick with the stylus. After you turn it on a little icon appears, prompting you to flick it. Want to play this game? You better learn how to flick!

I find it hard to believe that Henry Hatsworth‘s starting screen was playtested much, if at all. True, it’s just a starting screen. But it’s precisely the first thing your players will interact with, so you better take good care of it.

I am very happy to say that the two blog posts that I have re-published in my Gamasutra Blog have been featured shortly after their publication in the front page of Gamasutra. The Phantom Hourglass post was featured last week and the “Games mechanics that tell stories” post was featured at the end of June. Also, the latter was chosen as Gamasutra’s top standout member blog for the week it was released on, back on June 29th.

I encourage everyone interested in writing about design to go and open up a Gamasutra blog, since they are good with catching interesting posts and featuring them in their home page.

Below are spoilers for The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for the Nintendo DS. Though nothing from the story is spoiled, be warned that a whole temple is.

In my opinion, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is an amazing game. I’ve been a Zelda fan for a long time, however I had never played a handheld Zelda before. I expected to be overwhelmed by a full scale Zelda experience and in turn was pleasantly surprised with a much more streamlined, to-the-point adventure. This is not, however, the point of this post. For in this great game there was one thing, one amazing thing, that I just could not take: the Temple of the Ocean King.
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Wherever we go, we are surrounded by game mechanics. We carry them with us, we create them and we interact with them. Life itself can be mapped into any number of game genres – resource management? Check! Platformer? Sure! Strategy RPG? Why not?! – the world itself, it seems, is the best place to find inspiration for mechanics. This is why we usually speak of metaphors when we talk about game mechanics.

The concept of the metaphor comes into play when we attempt to translate real life mechanics into game mechanics (and vice versa) and I will get to it later; but before we even have to think of the metaphor we must first be able to identify the mechanics themselves. (more…)

Even though we are all still searching for the ultimate interactive storytelling experience, it is hardly arguable that video games have made progress in bringing slices of interaction into storytelling or, given their nature, storytelling into interaction. They have managed to do this in many ways, some of them definitely more effective than others, including examples such as Indigo Prophecy, KOTOR or Story Machine games such as Civilization or any sports game.

But there is a particular kind of interactive storytelling that I find more compelling than the others, even though I do not really think it holds the key to the zenith of interactive storytelling. I am talking about game mechanics that tell stories: player interactions that are charged with meaning and go beyond simple button presses – they are translated into story elements that bring us closer to the characters and closer to the story. (more…)