There are quite a few updates that the team had take into consideration while moving Global Killer from the PC to the WinPhone 7.  It’s a new audience and a new opportunity to expand our game to be an ideal fit for the mobile market.  We discussed a straight port of the game to the phone which would have only involved a few graphics changes and a controls update.  However, the game as it was built would not have lent itself well to mobile play experiences.  The controls and UI updates are very important to games but somewhat obvious with this one, so I’d like to discuss the market we’re approaching and the updates that we’re making to the levels in more depth.

Being an established gaming community, it’s fairly easy to look at the mobile market and see what works and what doesn’t when it comes to games.  I’ll open up my phone here and check out the top games in the iTunes app store…  The Zune marketplace is a little different, but I can save that for another post if people are interested.  The nuances are important but mostly out of our control for Global Killer.  For the sake of the argument, iTunes examples will do just fine.

The top paid apps in the iTunes App Store currently are 1. Angry Birds,  2. Fruit Ninja,  3. Angry Birds Rio, and 4. Tiny Wings.  These games take no more than a few minutes to fire up, start playing, and to complete a level.  Each of them has a single interaction that will get you through the entire game.  With the exception of Tiny Wings, you don’t have to be perfect to pass a level, but you can always go back and try to better your score.  Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja have a ton of levels or modes that help add longevity to the game play.  Tiny Birds does something slightly different but equally as brilliant, by having a new, procedurally-generated level to play every day!  It gives TONS of replay-ability with minor development and art time.  The genius of their simplicity astounds me.  All of these games are cute and fun, no death, gore, or tigers.  What’s also very important is that each of these games is highly polished.  There’s feedback and animations for every interaction, lots of visual reward for accomplishments, responsive touches and physics to make a solid and fun experience.

So why these features and why this sort of gameplay?  Mobile gamers often act like casual gamers do.  Players are looking to escape from their daily routine with whatever time they can get.  Often it’s a couple stolen moments on their commute or at lunch, or when they’re at home and the kids have gone to bed and it’s time to unwind.  Although they may choose to get deep into these games and spend a lot of time with them, a lot of time is not something they can commit to.

The idea that casual gamers are looking for a way to unwind is important as well.  These players don’t want to have to think or focus extremely hard, get super involved, and have to completely shut out the movie playing in the background.  These gamers want to chill out and have some fun and get rewarded for it.

What are our big take-aways?  The best mobile games have simple interactions, are easy to pick up and play, progress can be made in a short amount of time, they’re highly polished, and the mechanics are simple yet lending to long-term engagement.

Global Killer was a rapid-prototype game that was made for the PC.  Most of our design decisions were made resulting from time constraints and not necessarily because of market considerations, but we had a vision for the game that we were pursuing.   We did need to make one fairly big cut in our move to mobile, which was the planet shout bubbles.  With the massive amount of screen real estate that we’re losing there would be too much clutter with the planet shout bubbles, and the font would be too small and difficult to read.  The shout bubbles were a large source of humor for us and a place that we could add a lot of character to the game.  We’re working to rebuild those qualities in our art style.

The level design is the biggest aspect of the game that we’re reworking.  Instead of an arcade type game where our players would see how far they could get in a hardcore, no-fail mode, we’re shifting to a casual-friendly win criteria.  Global Killer is broken up into multiple small levels, which can be accomplished in 2-5 minute play sessions.  You don’t have to destroy every planet to win, and you don’t have to beat a time-limit.  Performance of about 75% completion will get you through the level.  HOWEVER, we don’t want to estrange our serious players, so time and execution will still be measured and players can revisit to get better performance grades (think bronze, silver, gold awards and leaderboards).  We’d still like to keep an arcade mode in the game as well, for those people that can and will play our game for hours just to show how wicked sweet they are.

Another advantage to breaking up the levels is that we can better show player progression.  You’ll see visible changes in the planets and in your asteroid as you move through the game.  These small visual rewards will help players feel like they’re reaching milestones in the game and encourage them to keep playing to find out what’s next.  Some un-lockable content won’t hurt that either.

We’ll also be handcrafting our levels instead of randomly generating them as we did with Global Killer on the PC.  I know, a few paragraphs ago I spoke of the brilliance of Tiny Wings and their random level per day.  Why would we leave that?  Creating our own levels allows us greater control in shaping the experience for our players.  Mostly, however, it helps us avoid randomly generated levels that start the player in an unfair position.  The biggest thing that we want to avoid is frustration.  With all the games out there, one bad experience from us and they don’t have to ever pick up our game again.  We’d like to stay as far away from that as possible.

This is by no means an extensive look at our new features for Global Killer, but they are the biggest changes that we’re making to be successful on a mobile platform.  The reworked level design is going to be a super addictive feature and the updated graphics and weapons will add a lot of depth and character to the game.  Although it would have been an (easy) option to do a straight port from our XNA title to the WinPhone 7, we want to go the extra mile to make this game a global killer!  (cue rim shot)

I have some issues with a lot of today’s tower defense games. To me there isn’t a lot of challenge with them: figure out your strategy to handle all the waves, upgrade as you get money, and watch the game go by. Watch the game go by for a long, long time. It seems the basic strategies that work on one map will work on all of them: zig-zag the towers to get the maximum path around each one, put your heaviest hitters and the ones that attack flying enemies in the center path to cut off fliers, and the list goes on. I usually lose health because I’ve gotten distracted and don’t upgrade or build for 4 waves, and not because there was a weakness in my path.

This article is about some new features we’re adding into Galactic Alliance 2, so I should probably give a quick background. Galactic Alliance is a four player tower defense game created by Vectorform. It is the only four player co-op game we’ve seen in the genre. We originally made the game for the Microsoft Surface and later saw the potential for it to be an iPad game as a direct port. We put it out there, and it did well! We were the number 4 free app store in the marketplace, made the new and noteworthy list, and topped the charts in Spain for some time.

For those readers that aren’t extremely familiar with what a tower defense game is, tower defense usually involves the player being able to place stationary weapons on the board which will automatically shoot at enemies that walk by them. The weapons are the towers and the enemies are commonly referred to as creeps. Creeps usually travel across the board in groups called waves, and between the waves players get a quick breather to add more towers or upgrade them. At the start of the game the player gets some time to put down a tower or two, and then the creeps start walking across the board from point A to point B. As you kill creeps you get more money to purchase more towers for the board to kill more creeps. If they get past your defenses and make it to point B, you lose lives. If you defeat all the creeps before you run out of lives, you win! The last bit of jargon you’ll read in here is ‘pathing’, which is the idea of placing towers on an open board in such a way that the creeps have to adjust their path to get around them. They’ll always take the minimum distance to get to point B, so by putting towers in their path you keep them on the board and in range of your towers for more time.

We were given the opportunity to revamp Galactic Alliance with some new towers and new enemies, and we jumped on it. It was finally a chance to address some of those glaring issues that we’d been finding with so many of the other games in the genre. Mind you, it would have been really easy for us to make a Field Runners clone. We had our different creep types that matched up with the ones in most other tower defense games, had our towers that matched up with most other tower defense games, and it is a well known and well accepted experience. Tie that with our stunning graphics and four player co-op, and we’re good to go. But we wanted to do better. We wanted to create an engaging, immersive gameplay experience that people will want to come back to.

As we started to get knee deep in the project, the team took a step back and tried to take the game in from varying perspectives. We asked ourselves the basic questions again, such as “What kind of experiences do mobile gamers like to play?” “How long can a gameplay session really be?” “How can we add variety and interest into the gameplay?” “How far can we push these new mechanics we’ve discovered?” There were some epic debates, (yeah we get like that, especially Kevin and I), but we’ve come out with some solid agreements.

I’ll have to start out with some of the new tower types that we’ve added, because they are the key to shaking up some variety in our gameplay. The goal at the outset was to come up with completely distinct functionality from each of the other towers. Instead of the typical one shot per enemy per recharge, we’ve added in a tower that does area of effect damage (AOE), a tower which will boost other friendly towers in its range, and some really sweet looking towers that work like an electric fence. We’ve also added in another tower that does nothing. That’s right, it just floats there. It’s my favorite.

Each of these towers has its own advantage and disadvantage against certain types of creeps. For example, the AOE towers are phenomenal when it comes to creeps that travel in clusters, but fast creeps skate by them with barely any damage. The Arc towers (the ones that act like electrical fences) can do extreme damage, but they’re tricky to place optimally and thus potentially costly to set up. And the asteroid that chills and does nothing? It is a super cheap way to setup a path to maximize the damage that the big towers are going to dish out. They are easily replaced for real weapons as more money is generated, but you can get as many as 3 additional passes by your strongest towers if the asteroids are utilized properly. Combine that with some well placed boost towers, and you can decimate certain levels with just a handful of actual weapons. Of course, we’ve implemented some creeps that make that strategy fail in certain scenarios, but it sure is a fun way to win a level if you can pull it off.

We also dictate which towers are available per level in the campaign, usually players just get 5 out of the 8 possible types. Although it would be ideal for the user to have all their tools accessible as they get them, that much freedom makes it difficult to guide players through the experience we’d like them to have. More so, in my opinion, it makes it more difficult to teach players new gameplay strategies. Taking away some of the towers that a player has been relying on forces them to at least see the value in other tower types, even if they don’t incorporate it as part of their ideal strategy. There are some levels and modes that provide players their full arsenal as well, so the biggest, baddest levels won’t hold players back.
I mentioned it briefly above, but we do have new creep types as well. I won’t get into detail on them in this post, but we’re definitely going beyond the grunt/speed/tank/flyer combos. Instead of having waves of enemies try to brute force their way through your defenses with speed or crazy HP, these are designed outsmart the most common strategies and make players think about the moves they’re making. One pathing strategy won’t get you all the way through the GA2 campaign.

And… I’m going to wrap up here for this blog, but in my next post I’ll talk more about some of the different modes that we’re adding, and crucial player feedback we discovered in testing. I challenge you to find the similarities to our Global Killer post. Can’t wait to hear your thoughts!

Players prep a cell with allies, traps and weapons before breaking down a wall to release an onslaught of the bug inhabitants.

The idea is that you live in a colony on Mars that was saved from giant hyper-aerobic bugs when a supply ship accidentally brought spiders into the colony.  Since then, spiders were revered in this colony, and the colony built itself in the shape of a spider web.  However, beneath the ground is a huge hive of these bugs that will ruin everything if they aren’t taken care of ASAP.

The player moves into a cell in this massive hive maze, seals the door behind them so the bugs don’t escape out of that room, and prep the room with explosives, spiders, sticky traps, bait, etc., arm themselves with a weapon, and break down the wall to the next cell so their room fills with bugs.  They then use the area they prepared to destroy all the bugs.  The cells are each uniquely shaped, so they can use choke points and fall back to their advantage.  If they survive, they then move into the next cell they just opened up, and seal themselves in again and repeat the process.

There are so many cool things we could do with this I don’t even know where to start.  For example, you could come up to a room with a giant “boss” bug that you actually have to keep several rooms behind you open to defeat.  Or a fast one could chase you through rooms.  There could be multiple entry points, evolving bugs, giant spiders for the player to ride, all kinds of cool stuff.

Definitely an idea I’m keeping on

For our final torque class, myself, Jen and Kim are working on an art driven game. There are several areas in the level that you teleport to and each has a unique mechanic, but this is my favorite.

The room is a simple platformer room, no penalty other than walking back to the start. However, it is completely black. The good thing is that you have pretty glowing footprints that never go away.

You can see how this goes, a player has to complete the level through trial and error. I’m banking on the level design keeping this from getting frustrating. Levels could progress something like a Simon game, where a sequence is repeated and one more step is added on each round.

I’ll update again on Saturday after playtests

He was discussing how to chose a lead in other ways than simply promoting your best artist/designer and letting them on their way.  One of the ways he discussed was to give a split when artists/designers reached a certain point, so they could choose either management or production and continue growing in the company.  He labeled them with levels, like “Level VII Lead Artist” and thus the title.

What if tasks had an associated experience point value?  Well performed tasks get more and others get less, experience for completing the “quest,” etc.  I don’t think that assigning concrete point values for a job well done would necessarily be a good thing, but you get the idea.

During project downtimes, workers could get the chance to “level up,” via pay raise, opportunity to learn and train new skills, location change, new toys, etc.  With the new skills they could choose to continue to specialize or maybe learn a skill from a different area… multiclassing!

Multiclassing, or hybridization could be useful if the large team ever broke up into smaller teams to accomplish a given task, or if the person chose to be a lead and was working with multiple disciplines.

Just thoughts

In Condemned: Origins fear is created through a few simple methods:

Limit visibility with darkness.

Started the player with a gun and then took it away.   It really evened the playing field when the bad guy took away your gun.  It was probably supposed to be scary knowing your gun was out there somewhere, but I knew it wasn’t going to show up again.

Multiple paths to follow.  Every time you reached a junction in the rooms or a new hallway, there were at least 3 paths for you to follow or, and more appropriately, for enemies to come from.  Until you followed every path to its dead-end, there was always the paranoia that a bad guy would be coming up from behind.  They never did though.

In the first level, all these open paths were not used to their greatest extent.  Enemies were pretty static.  It was cool that they would hide behind pillars to follow you, but they didn’t seem to have a large range that they could follow you to.    I’d like to play more to see how their principal’s develop.

You select/find different foods to eat and try to come up with the worst possible combination to unleash on people.  You win by making the most people sick in the shortest amount of time.  I also briefly mentioned having a bathroom penalty for how sick you make yourself

In Kameo you play as an elf/fairy princess who has the power to transform into different elemental monsters which use varying techniques to battle and solve puzzles.  I enjoy the mechanic a lot.  It’s easy and quick to switch in and out of forms.  So quick that you can use two different elemental warriors’ attacks together, even though you can only be in one form at a time.  Unfortunately, you can only switch between 3 of your 10 possible warriors without having to pause and reassign buttons.

The art style is a quirky fantasy style that I’ve come to associate with Rare.  It’s quite beautiful, but my sister and I have plenty to point out and joke about.  The main character is confusing though!  She’s called an elf, has fairy wings that let her jump and move faster but not fly, and is dressed like a sexy jungle Indian.  She can also pick up these giant, color-changing fruits that are bigger than she is and jam them in her mini-skirt.  I’m not a huge fan.  I can’t wait to get a skin for her.  Those are a ton of fun!  Yay for switching looks if you don’t like one.

I also enjoy that you can see Kameo moving in a different way for each elemental warrior form she is in.  For example, in this squid guy named Deep Blue she walks in a crab walk.  It’s a nice touch.

The level design in this game is some of the worst I’ve seen.  If it wasn’t for the map, I would never have any idea where I was going.  I still don’t always know where I’m going.  I usually have to walk all the way around an area to find the small cave I was looking for.  I think they are missing having a definite landmark and creating direction in the level around that.  The levels are often filled with cliffs in the center of the map which all look the same, so it’s hard to get your bearings.

That’s all the further I’ve gotten in the game, and all I can think to write for now.  I’ll add more as I think of it.

Josh and I started flipping through cards and realized that it was a pretty hard game, so the next night we played on teams with my younger sister and her boyfriend and my parents.  The game eventually dissipated into us “being kind” to one another because the question subjects were so difficult.

I think the game was so difficult because range of subjects is unlimited.  You’ll get a card about anything and need to be able to identify it whether it is authors, fictional lakes, baseball teams, yacht racing, or microbiology.  If there was a way to at least partly control which subject matter you got the game would be a lot more fair.  This could be done by having the cards split by difficulty as well.

I also think the challenge and steal cards are odd.  I like how they work in the game by essentially providing a win big or lose big scenario, but there is no way to replenish your stash.  You could use your cards in the first 10 minutes and play for 4 hours without ever seeing them again.  I’m not sure that it’s bad for the game, but it’s an odd mechanic.

I enjoy the central point of the game, but I see my peers and I playing by flipping through a set of cards and reading to each other, and not actually competing or keeping score.

1. Only invite reliable people that want to play.  When I say that I think of my sister and her boyfriend, whom were very hesitant at first but now they’re begging me to run sessions.  I also think of some of my other friends who have more DnD experience than anyone I started the group with, but out of the 7 or 8 sessions we’ve had have only come to 2.  It’s crippling when your team doesn’t show.

2.  Too many people spoils the broth.  It gets crazy, and when you have one or two people that are very talkative and are running the group, other players get pushed down.  It wasn’t until the more talkative ones stepped back that I found some of my other players were excellent.

3.  Give the players enough information to function.  For some reason I’ve enjoyed not telling my players the goal of the task they are accomplishing lately.  They get really frustrated.  I feel like it ruins the surprise and challenge if I tell them what they are shooting for, but it’s about the journey, right?  My players prove that all the time.

Also, if you give them enough information the game moves along a lot better.  Instead of letting them walk out of a cave and saying “you see the city (where they knew the goal of their quest was) to the north and dense woods to the west and a beach to the east”  I just say “you leave the cave and head north to the city.”  There’s no complaints, because they know that is where they were going and that way they don’t stand there and debate the likelihood of being attacked, which order they should march in, and if they want to explore the woods for the hell of it, etc.  If someone says they’d like to do something else, by all means they may say so, but the less open ended it is the smoother the game seems to move.  The quieter players get a lot less impatient and bored that way.

4.  I always need to slow down and say to myself “how will this play?”  I tried giving them this hugely giant boulder to push around and mess them up in my very first session.  Turns out they just said “okay we’ll push it” and away they went.  Then one made a perfectly legitimate and high skill check to find out what the boulder was and they figured out it was an egg anyway.  Sigh   That hasn’t happened as much since.

Alright, those are my opening remarks!  More good stuff to come.