Dev Take Tuesday – Be a Star Baker

Can’t say I thought I’d ever get into a reality TV show again. Can’t say I’d expect that show to be about baking. But my wife and I just started the third season of the Great British Baking Show on Netflix. I’m not much of a baker specifically, but I do most of the cooking in our home. I know I’m overly cavalier when it comes to following the recipe, and one thing that has stuck out to me on the show is the need for balance between adherence to formulas and a creative touch.

Image from PBS via Collider

With cooking at an amateur level, I think you can get away with simply knowing some basic cooking principles and then putting stuff together that tastes good. But baking is more precise, more scientific. If you decide not to include the eggs this time around, you’re going to end up with a vastly different texture and taste. Still, on the Great British Baking Show the “star bakers” tend to be participants who find those little ingenious flourishes that wow the judges.

While some game developers do take my make-it-up-as-you-go approach to cooking, I think the best approach is usually the star baker technique. As a designer that means looking at what’s expected in the genre and fulfilling those expectations. That’s why (thoughtfully) playing games is imperative if you want to design them. Once you’ve learned how to follow the recipe, you can then add your own flourishes that will wow customers and critics. As someone who studied writing, I heard some iteration of “you need to know the rules before you can break them” in almost every creative writing course I took. I believe that’s solid advice for game design as well.

For Alkanaur, we’re aiming for that star baker tactic. From the early stages of design, I knew I wanted to make a tactics game that was faithful to the genre’s predecessors. In my opinion, there were three things our tactical RPG needed, no matter what: an empowering sense of progression, skillful use of positioning and abilities, and a robust class system that encouraged diversity. I’m excited for the creative flourishes we’ve added to Alkanaur, but I’m also excited to simply showcase how our small team can deliver the exact experience our audience is looking for when they hear the words “tactics RPG.”

Indie Illuminator - The Iron Oath

As someone who loves the painstakingly crafted pixel art animations of Duelyst, I was immediately drawn to the images I saw of the Iron Oath, a tactics game—like Alkanaur—that is currently in the early stages of development. While in the end I believe our games will play out quite differently due to distinct gameplay emphases, I think we share a lot of game design principles, and I’m eager to try the game once it comes out.

Image from the Iron Oath's Kickstarter page

Art is the first thing that stands out for Iron Oath. The handcrafted pixel art world is dark and gloomy, but the sprites, backgrounds, and animations are beautiful. As someone currently working on pixel art sprites for our game, let me tell you: it’s a lot of work. But the results are certainly worth it.

Image from the Iron Oath's Kickstarter page

As for gameplay, the Iron Oath’s turn-based combat takes place on a hex grid. The more compact terrain (from the images I’ve seen) make me think the combat might play out a bit like Darkest Dungeon, with less room to maneuver and plenty of close-quarters combat right away. I love the addition of traps and destructible environment that should allow players to make some clever moves. If you’re interested, head on over to their Kickstarter page. As I post this, they are at about two thirds of their crowdfunding goal with over a 1,000 backers. I’m confident they’ll reach their goal, and I’m looking forward to the game’s release in 2019.

Indie Illuminator – Discover Play Share

While we occasionally cover indie game favorites in this blog, today I’d love to highlight a dedicated indie game review site: Discover Play Share. The website’s tagline is “light, digestible (indie) game reviews,” and I think they execute that idea to perfection. I admire a well-organized but excruciatingly exhaustive review that extensively covers all the minutiae of a game. But I also love a simple, succinct review. That's exactly what Discover Play Share offers.

Screen cap from the Discover Play Share review section.

In each game review, you’ll generally find (quick-as-a) bullet-point lists of likes and dislikes, gameplay screenshots, a breakdown of cost and hours of amusement provided, as well as a “final word” section that provides a few insightful paragraphs on the game. At the end of the review, Discover Play Share offers a simple yes or no recommendation instead of a traditional 1-10 rating system. From what I’ve seen, most of the games reviewed are also recommended, so it’s probably a good idea to at least glance through the other parts of the review. And that’s exactly why their “light and digestible” format works so well—I think it encourages the reader to not simply rely on an inadequate numerical rating by keeping the rest of the review easy to scan through.

I also appreciate the unique, colorful layout of the website, and you can tell the designer built the site with mobile users in mind. If you have a moment, pull out your smart phone and check out the current reviews on Discover Play Share—you’ll likely find some sweet games you haven’t heard of, and who knows…you might just find one of my own reviews on there some day.

Dev Take Tuesday - Webs and Layers

Well-written characters, much like onions and ogres, have layers. When making characters for a book, film, or video game it’s easy to settle on one key motivation for that character. But a character with one or two extra layers of motivation really starts to come to life. I saw a great example of this recently in the latest reboot of everyone’s favorite neighborhood web-slinger, Spider-Man: Homecoming. The film does many things well, but it was villain Adrian Toomes (a.k.a. the Vulture) that stood out to me. Of course actor Michael Keaton deserves some of the praise for excelling in the role, but I think the Vulture was a great villain because the writers decided to add one additional layer.

Concept Art (Image found on Screen Rant)

The Vulture could easily have been a simple reboot of a previous Spider-Man movie villain: the Sandman. (I’ve also heard that villain-turned-hero Deadeye in Suicide Squad fits this bill.) Both characters talk about needing to make money for their family, and prompt some measure of sympathy from the audience as a result. While a desperate need for money is a reasonable motivation for villainy, that motivation lacks depth. It will work, and the audience will feel some sympathy, but the story likely won’t go anywhere new.

Fortunately, Spider-Man: Homecoming provides an extra layer to the Vulture. Yes, after striking out on a somewhat risky business venture, Adrian Toomes definitely needs to find a way to help provide for his family. But why not turn to a less dangerous and unpleasant job than making and selling deadly weapons to criminals? The Vulture explains that part of his motivation is fueled by his hatred for the government—they callously ruined him when they appropriated his alien salvage, and the consequence in his mind was to return that callousness. I’m sure in Adrian’s mind he’s a less idealistic Robin Hood, stealing from the heartless “big guy” to benefit others (as well as himself).

 I’m glad that Adrian’s antagonism went beyond one simple motivation. More than any other Marvel movie villain so far, the Vulture kept me thinking as I drove home from the movie theater. I think it’s important to note that these extra layers don’t always need to absolve the antagonist of any crimes—I think Adrian Toomes was a clear villain who showed little remorse for how his selfishness might affect the innocent. But his character complexity certainly added some oomph to the storytelling in Spider-Man: Homecoming, and it’s something I’ll keep in mind as I write villains in Alkanaur and any future games.

Indie Illuminator - Crashnauts

Some games make great thematic decisions, and others make great mechanical decisions. The best games do both. Locally-developed indie game Crashnauts, now available on Steam Early Access, seems to be a game built around one choice that is clever both thematically and mechanically: what if your respawn were another weapon in your arsenal?

Screenshot of Crashnauts (found on the official website)

Any shooter or arena game that isn’t a simple sudden death match will involve some sort of respawn. Most respawns just boringly drop you back into the game a few seconds after your death. But Crashnauts doesn’t drop you back on to the playing field—it hurtles you down to the playing field with crushing force. After dying, players get a targeting laser that lets them aim exactly where they’ll respawn. If they crash on top of another player, they get an instant kill.

If you enjoy fast-paced arena shooters like Quake or Unreal Tournament, or if you’ve spent way too much time (like me) playing arena fighting games such as Super Smash Brothers or Rivals of Aether, Crashnauts might be up your alley. The game is still growing in its Early Access mode, so you can check it out here if you want to add it to your Steam Wishlist or give it a try right away.

Fatespinner and the Illusion of Choice

I’m a big Hearthstone fan, and I’m excited for the digital card game’s next expansion, Knights of the Frozen Throne. With every expansion comes the exhilarating and antagonizing slow drip of released and/or leaked cards. It’s difficult and even foolhardy to try and determine any given card’s full impact before every card in the set is revealed, but that doesn’t stop many people—including me—from trying. One recently released card generated quite a bit of discussion: Fatespinner.

Fatespinner features a brand new take on the common “Deathrattle” game mechanic, which means that something happens when the summoned minion dies. In Fatespinner’s case, the player secretly chooses from one of two effects: making all minions—both you and your opponent’s—stronger or dealing damage to all minions in play. At first glance, this seems to offer a fun choice for whoever plays the minion as well as an intriguing guessing game for the opposing player. Sadly, I doubt that Fatespinner will live up to its promise.

One oft-mentioned aspect of game design is the idea of “illusion of choice.” As renowned designer Sid Meier famously stated, a game is a series of interesting decisions. If a player starts to realize that their choices don’t actually matter that much, the game loses some of its sparkle. The illusion of choice might be hollow narrative decisions that don’t actually affect the story in any way. Illusion of choice can also refer to “cinematic” game moments that remove most of the control of the player, leaving only a shell of actual interactivity. But Fatespinner reminded me of one important example of illusion of choice: when one decision is always (or nearly always) the correct choice.

When the player chooses the secret Deathrattle effect for Fatespinner, the decision really only relies on the current “board state,” the number of minions each player has. If the opponent has more minions they’ll choose to damage all minions, but if the player has more minions they will choose to strengthen all minions. In turn, most opponents will realize what the “secret” is right away because the binary decision requires extremely clear information visible to both players. This card could certainly invoke attempts at bluffing, but in practice I think the downside to a lost bluff is far too great in comparison to the benefit from making the more obvious correct choice.

I might be wrong. I hope I’m wrong. Regardless, I think it’s helpful as a designer to break down any intriguing decision in a game and examine if the choice offered is illusory in nature. If it is, I like to think about how the decision could be improved. I think that the idea of a secret Deathrattle is a wonderful game mechanic to add to Hearthstone, but I’d like to see future cards present choices that aren’t so symmetrically opposed (two decisions with completely opposite effects but in the same vein of gameplay). I believe those types of choices will make the game more interesting for both the player and the opponent. It’s also something I’ll make sure to keep in mind with any binary choices presented in our game, Alkanaur.