Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 3.18
The metal blocks crumble as soon as the spikes touch them.
The solution is to walk left or right off the soft blocks into the open columns that have been
cleared up by the crumbling of the metal barriers: to become cognizant of the fact that the
spikes' transformation of the game world can be exploited by the player. The player's choice
here is whether to keep digging or to escape to the side. One of these choices seems right and
the other wrong, but making the “correct” choice requires cognition of the fact that destruction
by the spikes presents opportunities for the player, and having to make a choice based
on that
knowledge helps the player internalize the rule more than merely observing the rule would.
Later in the game, other scenes revolve around the player's understanding that some of her
options come from the spike wall's destruction of other game objects. Early in the game, this
scene's purpose is to develop the “spike wall destroys things” rule to the point where that's
clear, to establish the player's understanding of that rule.
I learned an important lesson in 2005 while tinkering with one of my first games. The game
started out being about a pig that projected her astral form into a higher plane to somehow
disrupt the machinations of slaughterhouses and ended up being about a squid in a pond
being pursued by fish. The game is called
Pond Squid
( s e e F i g u r e 3 . 1 9 ) .
In the space of this small pond, the player has to keep the squid out of the reach of the relent-
lessly pursuing fish. Eventually (though unpredictably), she gains opportunities to trap fish and
use them as projectiles to remove other fish, who by this point have consolidated into a giant
lump that is chasing the squid around.
