Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
buttons are bad. Unless they are needed for specific game mechanics or mood, for
instance, some games that imitate retro arcades do use onscreen controls.
Introducing functionalities
It is better to introduce the components of the gameplay step by step. This makes it
not too overwhelming for the player. His attention should be focused on one event
per moment. To express all the features of the element, you need to pay special at-
tention to the level design. The whole level should be about the element you want to
show to the audience—you need water to test a boat. The element's purpose should
be clear and univocal as well. Remember that it is more efficient to give the play-
er few, but good gaming tools, rather than surprise him with a bunch of possibilities
he will never use. This does not mean that you should not introduce something new
during the game progress, but you must stimulate him to drop the tools he has used
before in favor of the new ones.
The game level design should follow the same rule; if you are going to surprise
somebody with some element (for example, a beautiful waterfall), it should be alone
in its brilliance, and other components should not interfere. Moreover, it can guide a
player's sight in the proper direction, so the player can enjoy the complete view.
Health regeneration
Old school games used the metaphor of a medicine chest to cover up for the loss
of a character's health. A player's hard efforts were very often rewarded with some
medicine chests, so he could fight some extra enemies to get better health. I like that
approach very much; however, nowadays more and more games have dropped the
medicine chests, thinking that the player's being would be more comfortable with a
health regeneration function. How does it work? The character loses his health when
he is in a stressful situation; for example, he is in a fight, he has fallen down from
somewhere, and so forth. And he restores his health conditions when the situation is
calm. Also, when medicine chests are scattered on a game level, the autoregenera-
tion function should be balanced very accurately to ensure the game works well.
