The Animal Farm

Thought I'd take some time to re-explore some of my older game ideas. They may have already been presented in this space, but many of them are so old that even I barely remember them.

We'll start with High Noon, a project I started up in college and restarted at various points to little success.

At its core, it's a turn-based strategy game set in the Wild West. Before each battle, the player picks a team of thusly stylized units. Each unit has base stats (weapon, range, damage, etc) and a couple special powers. Each turn you have action points you can spend to move your characters around and attack.

Pretty simple setup. This was designed to be relatively small - no real player progression aside from acquiring new units, no story to speak of, just quick battles.

Back when I first thought of it, asynchronous play didn't exist as a widespread concept, but I think it's a pretty natural fit.

Might make a good Unity learning project? I'm already tinkering in my off-time (side note: I've ported a sizable portion of my procedural building generation, and it's looking pretty snazzy). Asynchronous is hard/costly to do cross-platform, but Game Center is a viable option for iOS-only.

Spoilers Ahead. Deal with it.

Bioshock Infinite was a good game, though somewhat lacking in the gravitas of the original Bioshock.

A lot was made of this big floating city in the sky, and beautiful as it was, generally it just felt like a normal city. A normal hard to navigate city, since I could never keep track of which skyline would take me where. There was a sky and some ground, and most of the time I forgot I was perpetually in the air. I tend to prefer bright and accessible games, but it's undeniable that Rapture set a mood that made it a character unto itself.

Columbia sets a mood more with what fills the environment. Much like Rapture is a picture of Objectivism gone wrong, Columbia is a comment on Exceptionalism and Nationalism taken to their nasty extremes. Here it does an excellent job. My favorite portion was when they introduce Fink and his establishment, focusing on labor exploits that are very much rooted in American history. His talk seems almost satirical - like the heightened rhetoric of Ryan - but it's a reflection of a reality that still partially exists. It's masterfully done.

The narrative had some pacing issues. Near the middle there is a series of fetch quests, cheapened by the fact that every time you get near the thing you're fetching you simply jump to another world where the thing you were fetching had already been fetched. Time starts to (seem to) skip around erratically, and without actually accomplishing anything you're in the middle of a bloody revolution.

Near the end there's the classic "giant information dump" to reveal things they couldn't fit naturally into the narrative but needed to reveal for a full conclusion to make sense. It's something Eternal Sonata did, though Eternal Sonata did it much worse. It's not terrible - they provide subtle hints throughout the game where you could possibly piece bits of it together, and once it all fits there are even subtler clues in the game that seem a lot more clever. Still, there could have been more organic revelations.

Comstock, for all his importance, didn't measure up. Andrew Ryan was a fantastic antagonist, constantly menacing you through the dreary Rapture. Comstock tries, and he has a few shining moments near the end of the game, but he's mostly of little consequence while you tear down his army. Fitzpatrick is equally unimpressive - you don't have a lot of time to warm to her before Elizabeth gets all stabby.

Gameplay didn't really bring anything new to the table. Guns were guns, Vigors were (mostly rehashed) Plasmids, the end. The skylines added a little twist, and it's clear they wanted me to use those by how much Gear they gave that was skyline-centric, but I never found much success there outside of hurriedly running away from a Handyman. It was good gameplay - a solid FPS - but nothing we didn't see in 2007.

I found myself missing the Big Daddies, the terrifying battles that left me within an inch of my life and completely out of ammo. Even though I always knew when they were coming and had time to plan and lay traps. The closest equivalent we had here were the Handymen. They were good - seeing one of those hulks tear an airship in half before charging you was certainly harrowing - but I think there were three of them in the entire game? Maybe I should crank the difficulty up.

I know most of this discussion has focused on the negative, and it sounds like I don't appreciate the game when set beside its predecessor, but understand that if it were half of the original Bioshock it's still miles ahead of every shooter and the vast majority of games. When I'm thinking about games as art, wondering whether I could make a strong argument for any mainstream releases, Bioshock 1 & Infinite are the games I reach for first.

A week ago I sat down and programmed a basic chess implementation with full support for hot-seat play. It includes most of the rules except for conditions where you can force a draw.

It even includes en passant, which hardly anyone knows. For those unversed: if an opponent moves a pawn two spaces for its first move and it ends up side by side with one of your pawns, you can take the opponent's pawn by moving your pawn into the space that was skipped over.

And for those not sure about how castling works: if you have an unmoved king and an unmoved rook, and the king is not in check, and there is a clear path between the two pieces, and the king would not move into or through a space that puts him in check, you can move the king two spaces toward the rook. You then move the rook to the other side of the king (jumping the king, essentially). This generally puts the king in a more defensible location and puts the rook in a more active role in the game.

The rules I haven't implemented: the fifty move draw rule states that if there are no captures and no pawn moves in fifty consecutive turns by each player, a player can claim a draw. The threefold repetition rule states that if the board is in the same state three times with the same player to move, a draw can be claimed (I probably won't implement that one). Pawn promotion is when a pawn makes it to the other side of the board and can be exchanged for any piece.

So yea. I guess RPG Chess is happening.

When I get some free time again, my next step is to setup the Game Center rig and see if I can't get asynchronous play going. After that, i want to add a framework for using character powers.

And after that, the world.

I've been putting a lot of mental investment into RPG Chess. Thinking about technology and resources and time.

Technology was a decision practically made up for me. I want to support asynchronous play, and the only (free) system that supports this is Game Center for iOS. There are other systems, but they're expensive or complicated or involve writing a lot of the back-end tech myself. There's a limit to how much time I want to spend treading that kind of water. My knowledge of web development is already pretty minimal, and if I manage to get through life never touching JavaScript or PHP again I'll consider myself a success.

Art is still a wide open question. I'm conflicted on a lot of things: do I want classes or not? If I have classes, it makes sense that every class would have unique pieces, but that's visually confusing. I don't want players to be uncertain about what image correlates to what piece. Do I want animations? That bumps up my art requirement considerably, but it could add a lot of panache to the game. Can I get away with just using stock art on the internet? There are some good sets out there, though less than I'd like. Is it morally reprehensible to take that stock art and sell it as IAP? It adds to the game, but it's not something I myself created.

Monetization has been at the back of my mind. I came up with the idea for the game without considering how to make money off it, but I've made no money off enough games that it'd be nice to, y'know, recoup some of my investment. (Side note: Cuddle Bears actually lost me money, even if you don't count the time we invested). I can sell: new piece sets, new boards, new board layouts, premium powers, premium classes if I introduce classes, avatars, artificial advancement. "Pay to Win" leaves a horrible taste in my mouth, but I hope to balance the powers in the game such that higher level players don't have a distinct advantage as much as they have a wider selection on how they'd like to play. Do I include ads for non-paying players? That's pretty common in freemium games, but I dunno.

Scheduling is a constant concern. I'm not horribly busy at the moment, but I'm busy enough to make a side project hard to manage. This thing will have to be scoped carefully - big enough to make it an interesting game but small enough that I can actually finish it. I'm already foregoing a single player mode entirely (no complicated Chess AI here!), so the 'RPG' title won't be as descriptive as I'd like. I think once I sit down and start devoting my energies, things will come together, but it's impossible to predict how long this will take or whether it will become another unfulfilled project.

Design wise, I've locked down a lot. I've got 20 different powers thought out. If I don't have classes, that may be good enough for a first release. If I do have classes, I'll need a lot more to support positive, constant player progression; at least 10-13 per class. The general flow and UI feel is coming together on paper. Communicating new concepts to the player has been streamlined, largely because the new concepts themselves have been streamlined.

During the course of writing this post, I think I've resolved on including classes. The major reason is that they provide a larger deviation on standard Chess and fit nicely into the RPG framework. I was starting to worry that simply 'Chess + Progression + Powers' was not enough of a difference to make this an interesting product. Allowing the player to have different characters that can each grow independently adds a whole new dimension. Balancing will be tough, and there are art decisions that come along with it, and it also slows down the new user flow if I'm not careful. But I think it's the right call.

So now I guess all that's left to do is, well, get started. Very little tech work has gone in so far, but hopefully over the coming weeks we'll see that change. First playable by the end of March? I'm not going to commit to that, but it's a nice idea.

Recall this post about RPG Chess - a deviation on Chess that introduced piece leveling and a new piece that leveled between matches.

As I tried to flesh out the game, I became increasingly dissatisfied with how hard it was to communicate all the information. First, every piece having different abilities depending on its level leads to a lot of information players need to manage. Of course there would be heads up displays, but as a player you don't want to constantly reference a help section to determine if a pawn at level 2 can counter-attack your every move. Second, the inconsistency between an individual piece (which would not level between matches) and the new War Mage (which would) creates a disconnect between expectations and reality. Third, the new mechanics could not be conveyed without lots of tutorials and notifications and popups.

Everything was feeling unwieldy.

My first move to rectify this was to cut the War Mage. A new piece with disjoint mechanics lost its appeal. However, I didn't want to lose the sense of progression, so instead I decided the player should level. Upon leveling, players would be rewarded with different abilities that can turn the tide of the battle.

The notion of abilities was a natural fit - it's a more manageable chunk of information that's easier to convey to the user. It also has parallels in other games which adds familiarity. Finally, there are more balancing options. Ability cooldowns can be introduced and tweaked based on level discrepancies between players. Bonus: it adds monetization possibilities in the form of premium abilities.

Once abilities entered the picture, individual piece leveling seemed less relevant. Instead of a piece gradually becoming more empowered, there could simply be abilities that did what those levels would do. So now instead of a pawn gaining the ability to move backward, we'd have an ability that moved a pawn backward.

It leads to a much more streamlined system. Most of the complications in terms of UI and messaging melt away without losing the crux of the idea.

The major open question that still remains: should all players have the same bank of abilities available, or should players bind themselves to a "class" where certain classes only gain certain abilities? The former seems the easier to balance - if players all have the same options available to them, there's no possibility of one player being at a severe disadvantage. It's also less work. The latter seems more personal, allowing players to choose a play style and bond with a certain class type as they would in any other RPG. The latter also has monetization options in the form of selling premium classes.

I'm not sold either way here yet. I lean toward giving players the same bank of abilities, but I remain very open to the idea of separate classes. There's still some thought and opinion gathering to be done there.

Here's a game idea that primarily uses a standard deck of cards & a board. Loosely described, because I'm not out to write the rule book in a blog post, but I think you'll get the idea.

Divide a deck into two halves - each half as a complete red & black suit. These halves form each player's personal decks.

On the board, each player has a certain number of 'card stacks' - a combination of red & black cards that are face up such that only the top card is visible. Red cards are attack cards, black cards are defense cards. At no point can a player rummage through his opponent's card stacks to see what cards are there.

Every round, players draw some number of cards from their deck. They then place those cards face up on any stack that they choose. If they have less than 5 stacks, they can place a card on an empty space to form a new stack.

Once players have placed all their cards, they start taking turns activating stacks. A stack can only be activated once per round. When a stack is activated, it can perform 2 actions out of the following list:
* Move - move a single space
* Attack - attack an adjacent opponent card stack
* Combine - place the stack on top of an adjacent stack, forming a larger new stack
* Divide - take any number of cards from the stack and form a new stack in an adjacent space

Those are mostly self-explanatory except for attacking: when a player chooses to attack another stack, both players reveal the cards in their stacks. The person with the most attack (red) cards is the winner. For each attack card in excess, the loser must give the winner a defense card. If the loser has no defense cards to give, he must give the winner all the attack cards. In the event of a tie, nothing happens.

The cards provide victory points equal to the face value of the card. The winner is the person with the most victory points at the end of the game. 'End of the game' conditions have yet to be determined - either once a player hits a certain number of victory points or a fixed number of rounds I think.

That's basically it. Exact numbers for things (board size, max # of stacks, victory points to win, # of actions per turn) are subject to iteration and actual playtesting. There's also room for special rules like making face cards do something special when in a deck. I see this as a potential mobile asynchronous multiplayer game as well, but it's worth roughing out a prototype to try it out.

This blog may just turn into assorted game ideas/executions for the foreseeable future. That wouldn't be its worst use.

Slots SLAM!

It's a cross between a slot machine game & a match three game. You spin the machine, and symbols come up. When they do, you can then move them Bejeweled style to form matches. You can't make a move unless it forms a match. New pieces do not fall in from the top.

When you're satisfied that you've made all the matches you can, you spin again to get new symbols.

You're awarded based on the number of matches and any combos. If you manage to match all the symbols without hitting the spin button, you're awarded a 'Jackpot.'

You're penalized based on how many symbols are left on the screen when you hit the spin button. If you hit a certain threshold, the game ends. Alternatively, there's a timer that your'e racing against to get the highest score. Alternatively alternatively, you have a set number of 'coins' you can use to spin & you gain coins with certain matches & the game ends when you run out. I'm sure there are other game modes that can be mined here, but those are just the two blatantly obvious ones.

It's a more casual game than what I generally focus my time on, but I think there's an idea here. Maybe something for a Game Jam?

Super Hero Racers!

In many respects, this is a traditional racing game. Except that instead of driving cars, you're controlling super heroes. Each super hero has a different mode of transportation - some fly, some run, some use gadgets or silver surfboards or whatever other ridiculous things spandex heroes use.

While racing, there are two complementary goals: win the race and maintain a high public perception. Your public perception is impacted by things you do during the race: if you do a trick, the citizens applaud. If you take a longer route to save a distressed reporter, the citizens applaud. If, in your haste, you accidentally run into a building and knock it down, the citizens are angered. You gain and lose points per these actions and you gain some fixed number of points for placing in the race, and the person with the most points wins. Think Excite Trucks (aside: that's a fantastic game).

Of course, every hero utilizes super powers throughout the race. Little gems on the track give you "super energy" which you can then spend to use your heroes powers. Each hero would have one or two unique powers - carefully balanced to make sure that no hero is ridiculous overpowered.

Race tracks would vary. There could be evil fortresses or cities or abandoned laboratories or dense jungles. It leaves about as much room as Mario Kart in this respect.

I still have one open question: should the races be confined to an essentially 2D track or should they be fully navigable 3D environments? I think full 3D environments leave a lot of room for creativity here - some heroes gain advantages depending on their mode of transportation - but it's also harder to balance and harder to move the race in the right direction. A 2D track is more traditional and more controlled and eliminates unfair advantage, but it removes some possibilities.

RPG Chess! It's so simple, I can't be the first one to think of it. The game is basically chess with two small differences.

First, basic pieces level up when they take other pieces. Leveling up grants them new "powers" (pawns can start moving backward, for example). These powers are specific to the game they're in - they don't carry over to new games.

Second, there is a single new piece - tentatively titled the War Mage - whose leveling up does persist between games. The player gets one of these pieces per game which he can swap in for any pawn which has not moved. The War Mage's experience increases after completing a game, not after taking a piece. At its core, the War Mage moves like a king, but takes on other properties as it levels up.

The intent here is to add a new twist on Chess while keeping its "fairness" - every player still has the same exact opportunities, and there's no randomness.

There are still a few open questions:

Do pieces level up individually or as a group? That is, when a pawn takes a piece, does only that pawn level up or do all pawns level up? The former attempts to prevent a "runaway leader" problem, whereas the latter is easier to convey to the player. I feel like the former would be the better solution.

How do we illustrate the War Mage's abilities? If a War Mage has leveled up five times, it becomes cumbersome for the other player to remember what he's capable of doing. The new abilities could stem from a predictable path (ie: the War Mage can move an extra space for every level), but that seems like an underutilization. We could keep a reasonable upper limit on the number of different abilities at any given time (say, 3), which is probably reasonable.

I see this as a free, asynchronous iOS game with IAP for purchasing different War Mage avatars, board backgrounds, piece sets, or even board layouts. I thought of it as a simple game, but the more I sketch it out on paper, the more I see the complexity (mostly in terms of menus) increase.

A "nice to have" system I roughed out was a "Mission" system that would grant the player extra War Mage Experience and/or premium currency for performing certain tasks - winnings 5 games, getting a stalemate, upgrading a pawn, etc. Think Jetpack Joyride's Missions, Tiny Wings's nest upgrades, or the Cuddle Bears multiplier system. It's a little bonus I fell in love with in Tiny Wings, but obviously it's part of a wishlist and not part of the core feature set.

Don't know if I'll make this happen. I think there's merit in the idea, but who knows?

My friend and I were musing about bucket lists tonight. I plan on living forever, so these kinds of things don't really have meaning, but I did think about a few items on my drive home:

• Walk up to a female member of any royal family and say, "'Sup Girl? How you doin'?"
• Scale the Eiffel Tower.
• Gain a reputation as a world-class gunslinger without actually killing anyone.
• Befriend and/or date and/or marry a British ginger.
• Spend an evening in jail.
• Stage an elaborate heist. This may or may not have anything to do with the above.
• Win a rap battle.
• Sing the entirety of Seal's "Kiss From a Rose" to a stranger.
• Have a very public feud with Winona Ryder but reconcile soon after.
• Climb a mountain top and wail on an electric guitar.

It's just version 1... but it's a start.