Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
First Impressions
I played an early version of Super Crate Box
(2010) before it was available online. In this game,
boxes appear at random positions on the screen; the player is scored by how many boxes she
can collect. Green monsters of various kinds—little and fast, big and slow, monsters that run
straight ahead and ones that actively chase the player—drop from a hole in the top of the
screen and move toward the bottom. If they make it all the way to the bottom of the screen
without being shot, sliced, exploded, or murdered in some way by the player, they fall
down
a hole in the bottom and reappear from the hole in the top, faster than before and red now
instead of green (see Figure 4.1).
Figure 4.1
Monsters wrapping around the screen and becoming red.
So strategy in this game is a balance between collecting crates and keeping the monster
population in check using the weapons available to the player. If the player collects a box,
which contains a randomly chosen weapon that she must then use, she is forced to change
her strategy. This is the dynamic of the game.
Here's the part that confused me, though: in the early version of the game I played, while the
monsters re-emerge at the top more powerful (and red) after they jump into the hole, when I
jump my little character into the same hole, it dies. This was, to me, a jarring lack of consistency.
 
 
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