Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Super Mario Bros.
' spiny beetle and piranha plant have a similar property: you can't jump on
them. They also have a shared visual property: their tops have spikes. This is the kind of
symbol that can become part of a game's ongoing visual vocabulary. If the player encounters
a distinctive-looking object that obeys one game rule, she'll expect a similar-looking object to
obey the same rule later. Visual design in games is all about shaping the player's expectations.
In
Spyro the Dragon
(1998), one of the protagonist's primary verbs is, naturally, to “breathe fire.”
The player uses this fire to defeat opponents and break open chests full of valuables. But not
everything in the game can be defeated by fire. The game uses metal consistently to indicate
things that are impervious to fire, such as armor on opponents or certain types of chests. This
metal is a visually distinctive gleaming silver. If the player uses fire on it, it heats up red for a
moment to acknowledge the interaction between the fire and itself, and then it cools back
down to its normal silver. This is usually a signal that the player should try her other verb, a
“charging headbutt,” on the opponent or container.
It's not just armored opponents and metal boxes that use the visual motif of metal being
heated up, however. As the game progresses, other objects appear that react to fire—
containers that, when torched by Spyro's flaming breath, expel gems that levitate above them
on a geyser of hot air, and switches shaped like fans that turn when heated to open gates. These
things are also metal, to indicate that they can't be
destroyed
by fire, but that they
will
change.
They heat up just like the metal chests the player first encounters, but the heated-metal motif
has developed further; unlike the chests, the gem spouts and fan-switches change in a mean-
ingful way.
Michael Brough's
Zaga-33
(2012) is a strategy game about navigating an alien planet that is gen-
erated anew by chance every time you play. The positions of the walls, the terrain, where the
monsters appear, the artifacts the players can use—all are random. In fact, the appearance of
the useful artifacts is randomized as well. A four-pointed cross can be a laser weapon one play,
a healing item the next, or a device that rearranges the walls of the room. Upon using an item,
it's identified for the rest of that play—the player knows that the lollipop-shaped thing freezes
monsters in place this time. But out of necessity, none of the images for artifacts can convey
anything about its use. They're all weird squiggle-shapes.
But there has to be some visual consistency between them, right? The player needs to know
that this thing in the corner of the room is an artifact she can pick up and use, albeit one whose
purpose she hasn't identified yet. She needs to be able to tell the difference between an
abstract-shape artifact and a dangerous monster.
Brough accomplishes this by giving each set of objects a unique, consistent color palette (see
Figure 4.6). Artifacts, regardless of shape, are always orange and tan. Monsters are always bright
green (with small orange highlights). The walls are green and gray, and the floor is black and
