Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

Building Game Worlds
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U L T I M A T E G A M E D E S I G N
these objects and have them working in code, it’s easy to make new ones, and you
don’t need complex organic character designs or advanced 3-D modeling techniques
to do it.
Most puzzle games hinge on a “foundation” game mechanic—a spine, a heartbeat!
Think about the simple beauty of Tetris: shapes and colors. We are challenged
to arrange these shapes in an optimal way to accomplish something. It’s like playing
with building blocks as a child. That exact kind of natural childhood play is a fertile
field of puzzle game ideas. Time to wax nostalgic and harvest those ideas. Why did I
like digging in the sand for hours and watching ants carve out tunnels inside a plastic
cage?
Puzzle game mechanics can be deceptively simple, and we always risk
overthinking our ideas. Game designer 1: “That’s stupid, we shouldn’t just pop
something; we should give the player the ability to grow their own popping characters.
People like to grow things, not just pop stuff.” Yep. Game designer 2: “If they’re
going to grow their popping characters, then we need to develop a balanced or
weighted system to determine how they grow up or progress through the popping
ranks.” See what I mean.
Some very successful games rely on matching and popping. There is no secret mystery
here. They simply feed our desire to match and pop things. Why we have a fundamental
need to match and pop things, I don’t know. I like to twist bubble pack to
create the “machine gun” effect myself. I also like rocket launchers. Would any
rocket arena freaks admit to playing Puzzle Bobble or Bubble Bobble? I will.
Developing a puzzle game, then, usually requires some focused experimentation
and revision. You start by experimenting with a particular idea you believe “captures”
one of these fundamentals of play. You define the way you believe the game
will work, and you experiment. There will be plenty of code tweaks. In time, players
might like an “unanticipated” aspect of your game that isn’t even what you assumed
would be the main point of the game. That’s okay. Go with it. Experiment. Listen. See
where it leads—quickly. It’s through this revision process that you improve your game.
As I’ve said, for the focused part of your puzzle game experimentation, you have
to be willing to draw on assembly behaviors and what I call “crunch” behaviors
(those addictive, repetitive, and satisfying behaviors like popping, squishing, smashing,
breaking, matching, and mixing). Take these assembly and crunch behaviors
and set challenges for your player. Experiment until it becomes obvious that the
game is working. Bring it home!
REAL-TIME STRATEGY GAMES
Building a real-time strategy (RTS) game is an immensely complex undertaking.
From a design standpoint, there are many decisions to be made in “planning” an RTS