Fairness doesn't apply to our game, at least not the sense of fairness discussed in the chapter. Our game is strictly single player and every player has the same opportunities and resources. The only part of the game that might need to be balanced for fairness is the final battle against an AI boss.
When it comes to challenge vs. success, I think that our game is well balanced. It is set up so that the majority of players will be able to complete it. For those who are more skilled or who want a greater challenge, they can try to beat the game as quickly as possible or try to defeat the final boss without the gun. I think that "layers of challenge," aka a grading system, could be a very helpful addition to balancing this aspect of our game. After beating the game once, players could replay it and get graded for each level based on how quickly and efficiently they find important items, how long it takes them to solve each puzzle, how much health they lose, etc.
I really wanted to implement meaningful choices into our game, but I feel very limited by our resources and our knowledge. As a story-based mystery game, meaningful choices would very much add to the experience. However, it quickly gets complicated by the need to write and program alternative branches of story and gameplay. We are planning on implementing one meaningful choice and one somewhat meaningful choice. The first is a triangularity: the player can either speed through the game and beat it more quickly (high risk, high reward), or they can search thoroughly for gun pieces and have a significant advantage in the final encounter (low risk, still high reward, but costs more time). This option won't be explicitly stated until the player finds the first gun piece, which is guaranteed, then they will need to decide whether to go out of their way to search for the others. It is a tough decision, because they won't explicitly know if they will need the gun. The second choice is that the player will have the option to visit either building first and will be able to collect the journal pages out of order. This will create a slightly different experience for each player, although it won't change the outcome of the game's narrative.
Our game mostly relies on skills: mental skills and some dexterity. There is really nothing in our game at this point that is left up to chance. The placement of hidden items will seem random to the players, but in reality will be carefully determined by us. Again, most of the skills required for our game will be "head" based, such as intuition, problem solving, and filling in the gaps of a mystery story. Some physical skills will be necessary to avoid obstacles by moving or jumping in time and to outplay the boss in the final encounter. Being entirely single-player and only having one subject, our game doesn't include elements of competition or cooperation.
Our game will be short. It will probably be around 30 minutes to an hour long. The game could probably be completed in about ten minutes if the player knew exactly where to find the essential items and exactly how to solve all of the puzzles. The length of the game will depend on the skill level and pacing of the player.
The primary reward system of our game will be tied to the story. The player will be rewarded for success by uncovering pieces of the mystery. Punishment is also integrated into the story, but only comes into play after the player finishes the game. Basically, the way the player plays the game and whether they succeed will determine one of two endings for the game, one happy and the other... less happy.
The game will give players a trivial amount of freedom but it will really be a carefully controlled experience behind the scenes. This is necessary to enforce the narrative structure.
It will really be a very simple game with simple controls, but some of the puzzles will be complex and the story will be somewhat complex. I would hope for some emergent complexity, but we'll have to see. It is much more difficult to implement without enemies to fight or other dynamic mechanics. I think that our game will be elegant rather than overwrought and confusing; that is the stylistic goal, anyway.
Finally, we plan to give plenty of detail in the visual environments but we are very limited in our aesthetic skills. There will definitely still be a lot left to the imagination, but we will try to find the sweet spot by providing detail the imagination can easily use. We also plan to offer a detailed story but leave a few things purposefully ambiguous so players will use their minds to analyze what really happened.
No comments:
Post a Comment