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2015's design innovations? (Patreon)

Published:
2015-11-27 21:05:55
Imported:
2021-03

Content

I'm still dedicated to doing 2 episodes a month. Cutting it a little fine with November's but it'll be ready for the last day of the month on Monday!

For December, I'll be looking back. One episode will be a deep design dive into my favourite game of the year (No spoilers!)


The other will be about all the little smart bits of game design and the clever innovations that have appeared in 2015. From talking to monsters in Undertale to fighting to regain health in Bloodborne.


If you have anything you'd like to nominate, chuck them in the comments and I'll take a look.

Files

Comments

Anonymous

WOW that editing looks complex! Wicked props for handling all that! In terms of nominations for design bits, I immediately think of "The Witcher 3"'s female characters and how they specifically have agendas that are entirely unrelated to the player, and will pursue other interests, sometimes even screwing over the player for their own gains. "Rocket League" and it's truly amazing kinaesthetics! and "Cities: Skylines" and how it brought back the city-builder genre by making it both more approachable *and* much more complex than any of the SimCity entries. Lastly Nina Freeman's "Cibele" is amazing for a lot of reasons, but it's blend of gameplay styles to simulate different aspects of her day and then voyeurism of the live-action cutscenes I'd definitely put high up on there!

Anonymous

I looked through my list of played games in 2015 and I found it really difficult to come up with anything fit for the episode unfortunately. Maybe Beyond Eyes having the approximation of blindness? It was kind of too frustrating to play though so maybe it doesn't really count as a working clever piece of design.

ddr

Two of my favorite games of the year are Bloodborne and Crypt of the Necrodancer. There's one important idea that they both happen to have that I love- a focus on compelling the player to act with urgency in places/genres they normally wouldn't. The Souls games to date have been challenging, but they've always left the door open to a more passive, "safe" approach. You could methodically proceed through levels, shield up, and take your time learning the ins and outs of most encounters, bosses included, so long as you managed your stamina well. With Bloodborne, they've taken clear strides to limit that kind of passivity. Shields are no longer a real option, enemies come at you quicker and in greater numbers than before, and, by the end of the game, even the levels themselves are in on the plan- with Yahur'gul and the Nightmare of Mensis both telling the player to "move!" with their new mechanics: the bell summoners and frenzy inducing brain/monsters. Even the health system has changed to enforce this need to make progress quickly; exploring a new level/boss slowly can get the job done, but no longer can you count on having an indefinite amount of healing items across respawns. Blood vials are plentiful, but still limited. (They're also super quick to use, having the secondary effect of allowing a player to stay in combat when damaged and heal quickly, instead of feeling the need to retreat, regroup and try again- another point for this new philosophy of constantly staying in action) Players have another chance to heal, of course, in the regain mechanic, which again encourages them to stay in the action and keep fighting, even at moments when they'd most feel the instinct to fall back. Crypt doesn't have any franchise predecessors to serve as reference points, but it does have a whole genre. While a realtime roguelike isn't completely new, (at least to my knowledge) the game gets so much mileage out of taking the demands of realtime into a traditionally more deliberately paced genre. While defeating any of its pattern based enemies would be a piece of cake with familiarity in a true turn based take, placing them in a real time environment and demanding a layer of execution on top of understanding their unique rhythms makes the whole game work. Factor in having to deal with multiple different types of enemies at once, changing beats, terrain, and other factors, and you have a legitimately challenging game where you have to constantly "act!" even while processing all the different things going on. And that's really the shared thread here- both roguelikes and Souls games pride themselves on making players act with deliberate thought by punishing them for doing anything else. Yet, as Crypt and Bloodborne have shown, that doesn't mean you give the player the ability to proceed at a slower pace; you can demand both thought and urgency, and have a richer, more engaging experience for it. As an aside, I've always been interested in how game designers justify turn based over real time and vice versa. Whenever I see a turn based game, I assume I'm going to be challenged well beyond what could be asked of me in a real time space- otherwise why give me the ability to wait between each action? You can mine a decent amount of challenge out of simply being real time; to pass that up is to suggest Civ/Grand Strategy like demands on a player's mental ability. Yet many turn based RPGs/SRPGs barely tax the player each turn. When I think about what can be expected of a player in real time in games like Starcraft or mobas, it seems like games like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Tactics Ogre or even Etrian Odyssey are being far too generous by allowing players time to think before they press Basic Attack, Heal or Nuke again. I'm partially exaggerating here- I realize many prefer turn based for certain games just stylistically. Crypt just has me thinking about which easier series or genres could benefit from asking the same mental calculations from players in a real time environment.

Anonymous

I actually think there have been a good amount of 'innovative' games I've seen this year that are totally unique with their mode of access. Keep talking and nobody explodes comes to mind in terms of a co-operative game and using multiple people to coordinate a bomb defusal. That adds a truly unique element as well as coinciding with the idea of urgency what William Gray beautifully elaborated at lengths with. Exanima came out on Steam and that is a physics based top down dungeon crawler. So it has the feel of a slow, intense Diablo. Similar to War of The Roses where the specific mouse placement changes the way that the sword is both swung and with it's intensity; Exanima does that from a top down field, so it has a very intense feel to it. Rocket League is a good choice because the mechanics and the haptic responses for that game are fucking baller.