Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
While point-and-click adventures have many merits, game design is not
one of them. For the most part, these are not games at all, but puzzles.
Worse, they are very often bad puzzles. They are notorious for hunt-the-
pixel problems and other totally arbitrary problems that must be solved.
All of the merits of such games—without any of the annoying frustra-
tions—could be enjoyed by watching a person play the game on YouTube.
Interactive Fiction
Examples: Zork , Adventure , Facade
See the “Games and Story� section in Chapter 2 for better insight into
why putting interactive and fiction together is simply a bad idea. Mar-
rying them makes designers choose between having a bad story, having
bad gameplay, or having both suffer a little bit. It's not completely impos-
sible to make something good in this genre, but it is a bad idea to try to
do so when there are other media that are better for stories and better
for gameplay.
Shooters and Shmups
Examples: Galaga , Gradius , Contra , Metal Slug , Ikaruga
While there's nothing inherently wrong with shooters and shoot-'em-ups
(shmups), their play tends to break down into memorization puzzles. As
far as I can see, there are no random games in this genre. However, some
of them have some very interesting gameplay mechanisms that could
really be expanded upon, such as the Treasure games Bangai-O and Ika-
ruga . These are also sometimes referred to as bullet-hell games, because
of their habit of putting hundreds of bullets onscreen. I find that this
term tends to understate the real genius of these games, however.
Abstract Puzzle Games
Examples: Tetris , Bejeweled , Puzzle Quest , Dr. Mario
Abstract puzzle games are absolutely not puzzles at all, but they still get
called puzzles. I attribute this to our habit of calling anything that isn't an
action game a puzzle, or perhaps to the fact that the “pieces fit together.�
Regardless, these games have a lot of potential and need to be explored
more: being abstract means that the gameplay is always the focus. I high-
ly recommend people experiment more in this genre, because there's
another Tetris waiting to be found right around the corner.
Roguelikes
Examples: Rogue , Nethack , Diablo , Titan Quest
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