or, A Million Ways to Ruin a Good Idea
nice pants, shorty
Last Things First – The Conclusion
This game (“Lost Races’ Abandoned Artifact Recovery“) failed. It is not fun (actually rather boring). It fits the theme, but not in the way I wanted. It does not transmit the information intended. It is not very funny, either.
In short, the game does not live up to any of the goals set. Let’s go over why.
The Concept
This is the only part of the game I am proud of, even if it is not reflected in the finished product in almost any way. You take the role of an exploring astronaut, scavenging old, abandoned machines and technologies left behind eons ago by advanced races (now extinct). This mechanic alone may have been interesting, but there is another twist: whilst you are busy discovering and cataloging these machines, another technologically-advanced race is monitoring YOUR progress.
I was struck by this model of double-discovery as a good take on the theme, and something that would probably be rather original. The game wouldn’t explicitly tell you that you are being watched, rather it would become clear as you played. (Also, if your actions arouse too much attention, you are destroyed.)
I decided to go with a mechanic that requires the player to upset a random distribution of “glowing stones”. As the player organizes stones around focal points (the artifacts), they are unwittingly making their presence known. I show this by using a minimap in the lower right-hand corner, which actually represents what the aliens see on the planet.
Daniel recommended using negative entropy as a measure of organization (defined here), which worked very well. I built a quick proof-of-concept in MATLAB. It’s like a poor-man’s pattern recognition algorithm, and Flash was able to do it reasonably quickly.
For the same number of points, entropy is reduced as they are clumped up
Another thing that spurred me forward: I don’t know of any other game in which the minimap plays a key part of the mechanic.
The Riddle
This is my fourth Ludum Dare competition. This compo marks one year since I made my first game, for LD16. If so, why, oh why, do my tilemaps look like this:
I know retro is in, but Windows 3.11???
Why? WHY WHY
The Failure
Ultimately, despite the good concept driving it, the game failed to communicate what was necessary.
The scary voices I added were ambiguous to the players. Along with the “alien” writing (Wingdings), they were meant to correspond to the interest level of the aliens, ie. how organized the playing field is. Similarly, the minimap was not recognized for what it was, and I was asked “why doesn’t the player appear on the map?”.
The graphics were very, very ugly (except maybe for the astronaut’s helmet, which I liked).
Evidently, the algorithm failed as well. Depending on the random starting layout, entropy would drop at different rates as clumpiness was achieved. Also, I couldn’t account for different player styles, so maybe clumping differently had an impact on the measurement. In any case, people could play through the game without losing and without knowing about the Overwatch aliens. To these players, it was a boring, repetitive game with no point and no reward.
Random distribution - no alien threat
After player "organizes" the stones near artifacts - high risk
To players who lost, I doubt they understood that if they redistributed stones after discovering an artifact, they could avoid the aliens’ attention.
Ironically, I thought of a great way to improve it, after the competition was over. Instead of piling stones on top of artifacts, the player should uncover them from beneath mounds of stones. This is more intuitive, and might be coupled with a physics element to provide a less “grindy” feel. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to test it out.
Dear Eli: For Next Time
- Try to make a SIMPLE game that does ONE THING and does it WELL.
- Don’t bother with forced artsy concepts that hold up an entire game. Maybe these concepts need to be built, but maybe they don’t need to be in game-format. Maybe it’s the wrong medium. Maybe.
- GOOD GRAPHICS
- If completing the game does not provide satisfaction, there needs to be something more than a title screen that says YOU WON!!! on it.
Hope I do better next time. Thank you for reading and I apologize for making another non-fun game.
By the way: if you have read this far, then YOU WON!!!
Tags: Failure, not a fun game, post-mortem, self-flagellation
And post on the blog frequently, and hang out on IRC, of course!
I had a very bad night’s sleep during the compo.
