6 Ways Dome Romantik helps the player
While making any game i'm thinking a lot about tutorialization and how a first time player will experience it. I just wanted to share a few things how i tried to make Dome Romantik easier to understand and more enjoyable, while not affecting the balance. This is not special or awesome, just something basic i enjoyed thinking about.
So, the setup is that you are in this dome. You go into the ground to mine resources and carry them back to the dome, which slows the player down. About every minute a wave of monsters will attack. You shoot those monsters with a laser, controller with the station in the dome.
1. Give the player time and opportunity to learn
The first image you see is just an empty dome. No keys need to be explained, because everyone will try arrow keys or WASD anyway. The player then has to figure out that he can move and go downwards. As soon as he hits a tile, he'll notice its reaction and try again. It will quickly be mined, uncovering the first actual resource. Mining it will spawn exactly 2 drops. A small panel appears on the bottom, that explains that those drops can be carried by pressing space
Only after the player carried these drops back to the dome, the countdown for the first wave will start. This way, the player has as much time as is needed to learn the basics. At the same time, most of this is learned by doing and experimenting, not by text. Players are clever and figuring things out is fun - the difficult part is to make a safe space to do so.
2. Introduce the HUD gradually
After carrying back the first resources, the player can buy an upgrade that will show when the next wave arrives. This focusses the attention on the fact, that there is something coming, while not sidetracking the player when learning the basics. It also feels pretty useful. Similarly, the player can buy an upgrade to show the domes health, or the currently stored resources. So it's mainly about gradual increase in complexity, with the added bonus of the good upgrade feel.
3. Time to read in a cheeky Pause
Dome Romantik features many upgrades with some text. Due to the time pressure through the waves, it is absolutely a good idea to pause the game while the player reads through the upgrades. The alternatives are not understanding the upgrades, or being frustrated by the unfair time pressure. So, if something should be read, the player has to feel safe in taking the time to do so.
However, the game is only paused at some points. If you look closely, the game says paused on the top screen. That's true for everything except for the resources. They still go into the shredder and become available to pay for upgrades. This made a lot of sense to me, since otherwise the player might go into the upgrade menu, but has to exit it again to wait 2 seconds until the resources are shredded. Removing this shredding would also work, but that would take away a bit of flair. After all, hauling back big digs should be satisfying and take appropriate time.
4. Context sensitive Tutorial Panels
Carrying resources slows you down. The more you carry, the slower you go, until a stop. This is not that easily explained, and quickly forgotten if front loaded. Instead, i opted to show this little panel the first time the player is slowed down by more than 50%.
not the only spelling error :D
Also important: As soon as the player does drop a resource, the panel vanishes. Otherwise it vanishes after a some seconds automatically. I had to learn this the hard way: Players most likely don't remember what was explained upfront. What's also useful is that not everyone will see this, only those for which it is relevant. If a player already figured this out, he won't see it either.
5. Reduced tedium
In earlier stages of development, the player had to do a bit more work, like manually dropping the resources in the right place of the dome. This is no fun, tedious and prone to bugs, so now instead they are automatically dropped when the player enters the dome and hover over to the right place. It's always good to check if an action should be done actively by the player, and if doing it is fun.
6. Guarantee the time between waves
When fighting off waves, the player enters the battle station and shoots all the monsters of that wave. Naively, the counter for the next wave would start as soon as the current wave finishes, right? The only issue here is, that the player might sit in the station a few more seconds, because he hasn't realized the wave is over. Then he'd have less time until the next wave, or be nervous to exit the station quickly enough as to not waste any time. To cover for this, the wave counter will only resume after the player exits the battle station. So the player has a guarantee that he can mine for the full time (nearly a minute) between waves. Like the other things no big deal, but a small nice thing to not put the player at a disadvantage.
What i should have done here is play a sound when the wave is over - i missed that.
Not bad, not bad, now you!
Did you help your players of your game and improve their experience, maybe in a subtle or non-obvious way?
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/panemuan
