Category Archives: Blog
Achievements as a Design tool
I have somewhat of a love-hate relationship with video game achievement systems. The ‘hate’ comes mostly from the fact that I tend to really disagree with how they are used nowadays. I believe achievements can and should be part of a game’s design, but more often than not they’re relegated to just some medals for completing certain parts of the game or pure boring grind. There are also skill-based achievements, like getting a perfect run in Super Meat Boy, – I think those are perfectly valid since, well, you have to actually achieve something. But then there’s achievements that can motivate the player to experiment with the game, try out different things, and it seems to me there’s just too few of that.
Reus
Reus is what I’d call a mix between Populous and Settlers, two of my favorite strategy game series. Your goal is to create an economy eco-system (the Settlers part), but indirectly, by shaping the planet and placing and transmuting different environments and resources (the Populous part). And it’s simply a delight to play.
Story Time: Of sandstorms and time loops
Back in the year 2005-2006, while working on Evil Islands: Spring on Jigran project, we have noticed something really weird. Evil Islands has this weather system, where to each game zone one of the three weather types (rain, snow and sandstorm) is assigned, and the game would at random times activate the weather. Rain and snow were just particles that would fill the visible on the screen area, but sandstorms were… well, they were particles as well, but they were also actual in-game objects that communicated with units on the map – dealt damage to whoever got into contact them. Sandstorms would last for 10-15 seconds before disappearing, though, so it wasn’t that big of a problem. And it was a rarity to have more than one sandstorm active at a time.
But on one map something strange has happened. When a particular quest was active, and only that one quest, the sandstorms were EVERYWHERE. Dozens of them, roaming around, killing poor unsuspecting citizen NPCs (and also players who at that point in the game didn’t have enough armor to protect themselves from sandstorm damage). What could possibly happen?
Now, obviously, it had something to do with that quest, but the scripting language didn’t have any commands to control the weather, it was all done by the engine (for which we didn’t have access to the source code itself). We were pretty much clueless. I was really baffled myself, because that particular quest was scripted by me. However, we did notice that the command that would set the day time to midday for this mission was caught in a permanent loop. A little accident. Quickly fixed. Now, back onto trying to figure out what to do with sandstorms and… there were none anymore?
As it turned out, if the command for setting the day time is looping, it constantly activates the weather effect of the game zone we’re in. We still don’t have any idea how in the world that makes any sense, but, hey, at least we could turn this into a feature if so desired, right?
Antichamber
The thing that inspired me to try out Antichamber was how psychedelic it seemed. Ironically enough, the same thing is what put me off from the game itself. I exited the game with a sour taste in my mouth and no real desire to come back to it.
Adaptations
Let’s talk about adaptations. The second Hobbit movie has come out fairly recently and there’s quite a few arguing going on around if it’s a good adaptation, so this seems to be a good time to talk about this.
Assassin’s Creed II – Plot Pacing
Let’s just get one thing out of the way as soon as possible. Assassin’s Creed II has got a good story. It’s not as thought provoking as its predecessor’s, and it’s a simple one with a very straightforward character arc, but it’s still good. That being said, at certain points it suffers from bad pacing and poor writing (which seeps into the mission design and gameplay, which is one of the reasons I decided to tackle this topic before going to a more detailed Sequence 10 post). So I’m going to talk more about that today. Spoilers ahead, obviously.
Assassin’s Creed II – Sequence 9
Assassin’s Creed II is widely regarded as the best Assassin’s Creed game. And I love Assassin’s Creed II, don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of awesome things about it. But there are also quite a few flaws that it gets away with, in my opinion, and having repeatedly argued about these topics with a number of people over a certain course of time, decided to make a small blog mini-series. I’ll start with Sequence 9. Spoilers to those who haven’t played the game.
Torchlight
If Torchlight has solidified anything in my design preferences, then it’s my distaste for huge amounts of loot. I like Torchlight, I really do. It’s a fun isometric Action/RPG experience, with very precise, responsive and polished controls, good enemy variety, a nice skill system, and pets. When I first opened up the game and saw that you can have a dog or a cat I instantly went ‘OH MY GOD THIS IS SO COOL’, I didn’t even know what their purpose was at that point.
Evoland
From the very moment I pressed ‘New Game’, I fell in love with Evoland. It’s a game that integrates evolution of the action/adventure, RPG and JRPG genres in its mechanics, starting out with a GameBoy black and white Zelda-like experience and ending with a full-fledged 3D boss battle. It’s simply amazing. But.
It doesn’t really hold up as a game that well. Ironic, isn’t it? It’s a great, and, most importantly, niche experience. If you’ve played video games for the past 15-20 years at the least, or you were/are interested in a lot of old games before your time, I think you’ll find this nostalgic trip quite enjoyable. I mean, come on, you get to buy an upgrade that removes CD loading times (that were indeed put on purpose) from the PlayStation era locations. How cool is that?
But the game is very basic. It’s got mechanics from Zelda, Final Fantasy and Diablo, and they all, while present a solid foundation, don’t have much depth to them. There are clever moments, don’t get me wrong, and the part where you time travel between Old and New graphics has got to be the most enjoyable section of the game, but it doesn’t feel enough. The soundtrack is really cool though, and game-related humor is amazing.
Still, this brings up an interesting question. Does a game need to have flawless mechanics that do not get old quickly to truly enjoy it? Perhaps that’s a topic that requires a more detailed discussion later. But at least in case of Evoland, I can honestly say – no. No it doesn’t. I loved every second of it.
Age of Pirates: Captain Blood
This story is about a game which I call ‘The Russian Duke Nukem Forever’. The game has started its development in summer 2003, so it seems fitting to talk about it on an approximate 10 years anniversary of the project. This is the story of Age of Pirates: Captain Blood.
Stanislav Costiuc 