Puzzles vs. Games
Progression
I’ve been working these last few weeks on game mechanics trying to fine-tune the mechanics for the early game. I’ve also been working on ways of coming up with some early forms of finance to cover the costs of 2D and 3D high quality art for: character, animal, monster, & boss. I’m playing with the idea of making a Player vs. Player (PvP) version of the game where you can battle with your character 1:1 or 2:2 outside of the RPG game play. I’d like something like this to be do-able with a character you can turn around and play in the game.
In general, game mechanics are hard to make for a game when it’s co-operative, but certainly more difficult to work well when you want to allow characters to battle one another and play in a co-operative RPG.
Great Research
I’m going to pause here and give a huge thanks to Extra Credits. They have some amazing videos on game making, mechanics, stories and more. While I can’t say I’ve followed all their advice, they do have some good stuff. While some of their focus is on video games, there is a lot that applies to tabletop games too. If you were curious to learn more on your own I’d check this out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z06QR-tz1_o&list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5BkTruCmaBBZ8z6cP9KzPiX
Inspiration
OK, back to Game X. So this week, I built some basic mechanics borrowing from D&D, Gloomhaven, and KDM to try and make a simple concept for a character’s base stats that support leveling, using attributes like HP, Stamina, Strength, and Shield. I’ve also played with physical and mental abilities. I finally got to a point where I was ready to test two players battling one another. When testing, I started with a concept where players have different levels of energy, and different hit / shield stats, but all of it was static. By that, I mean no die rolling. It wasn’t long before I realized two key things.
Learnings
Finding broken characters is good this way: Very quickly you find which characters you’ve built are “broken” or don’t play well at all. One example I tested was a character with crazy HP but very low stamina. They were too handicapped to the point of not being able to do much before they died. Since there is no randomization, there is nothing to hide their flaws.
This is NOT a game: My neighbor Kevin made this point to me a few weeks prior and it was a good one. Mechanics without any randomization become a puzzle, not a game. That is to say, when two characters battle with set abilities that don’t change and don’t have any randomization, your battles become a matter of figuring out what combination of moves are required to win. In the end it becomes obvious and then just a matter of time.
Given this knowledge, I’ve started working in subtle levels of randomization. I don’t want to add so much that the game starts to become unwieldy or unpredictable. I’ll say there are some games that have such a high level of randomization and also a high level of what I would call Punishing vs. Challenging that they are no fun to play after a while (there is a great Extra Credit video on this too).
Next Steps
While I’m getting closer to some working mechanics that I can move forward with until I’m ready to do more play testing. But before I finalize this, I want to test some battles with my creature mechanics in addition to PvP. I’ve also picked up some copies of Dice Tower, Key Forge, and my neighbor and I played Magic to practice with some different types of PvP mechanics for an early mini-game option. It’s going to take some time, but I am starting to see real progress now and getting quite excited about the potential of a RPG and PvP combo game. There is nothing cooler than starting to see a game you’re creating really become something you can see yourself playing a lot. Hopefully I’ll have something in the coming months I can share with others to share that level of excitement, and get input to make it even better!