Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
leaving out any opportunities for the player to explore or enjoy the space for its
own sake. For some levels, it might be more interesting to start with designing an
engaging space (such as a castle, space station, or famous nonfictional location) and
design a mission to fit that space.
Mapping Mechanics to Missions
Game mechanics interact with missions and game spaces differently. We'll deal with
missions first and address game spaces in “Mapping Mechanics to Game Spaces” later
in this chapter. The interaction with missions is often straightforward. The game
mechanics dictate what actions are available in the game, and these actions suggest
tasks that can be used to build missions. For example, if the game allows the player to
collect flowers, a simple mission could be to collect ten flowers. In this section, we'll
explore some variations on the flower-collecting mission to make it more enjoyable.
addinG chaLLenGes TO imPrOve The exPerience
When mapping mechanics to missions, it is important to be sure that the tasks are
not too trivial or repetitive. If collecting a flower only requires the player to navigate
to a location and press a button, it offers no challenge. You can use Machinations
diagrams to document the challenges that a mission offers and to help you think
of design strategies that avoid trivial and repetitive tasks. The mission to collect ten
flowers might look like
Figure 10.3
. From the diagram, you can see that the mission
is both trivial and repetitive. The way to complete this game is simply to click the
source ten times to win. There is no choice, and the game involves no player skill.
(Remember, at this point we're discussing missions independently of the space they
take place in.)
FIGURe 10.3
repetitive and trivial
mechanics create poor
missions.
The mission can be improved by adding enemies that the player must avoid. The
new mechanics are represented by
Figure 10.4
. In this case, the player needs to
choose whether to focus on avoiding enemies or collecting flowers (if you built the
diagram yourself, make sure you put the diagram in synchronous time mode so that
the player can activate each element only once every second). The effect of avoiding
is randomized a little: The player removes one to three threat tokens when avoiding.
This randomness models variation in player skill.
FIGURe 10.4
adding enemies to
create choice
