Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
• Restart level from beginning
• Restart from last checkpoint
• Power-ups are lost/are kept
Global difficulty
Finally, once you feel you have a decent balance of the preceding list, add a master
adjustment factor that allows dialing the universal difficulty up or down. This is sep-
arate from and affects the difficulty settings the player has control over.
It will also allow you as the game designer to fine tune the entire gameplay experi-
ence. Is the game too short? Crank up the difficulty a notch or two, then test again.
Is it too long for a mobile game? Reduce the global difficulty and try again.
We used this method while play testing Faceball 2000 for the original
Game Boy
. At
one point we had play testers falling out of their chairs, trying to get around a corner
to avoid a shot. Another time one of our coders got so angry, he threw the Game Boy
into a mirror. We then knew we had the perfect balance.
