Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
famous for getting irritated about being lied to.) Be sure that the player gets what-
ever information she needs to
think
she clearly knows the victory condition so she's
never left without any motivation.
The Intermediate Challenges
Most designs leave intermediate-level challenges implicit. If you give the player
nothing to do except follow explicit instructions, it doesn't feel like a game; it feels
like a test. Part of the player's fun lies in figuring out—whether through explora-
tion, through events in the story, or by observing the game's internal economy—
what he's supposed to do. Armed with the knowledge of both the victory condition
at the top and the right way to meet the atomic challenges at the bottom, he has
the tools to figure out the intermediate challenges—if you have constructed them
coherently. (See the section “Avoid Conceptual Non Sequiturs” in Chapter 12 for an
example of how
not
to construct an intermediate-level challenge.)
DESIGN RULE
Reward Victory No Matter
How the Player Achieves It
Players will think of things to try that you might not have anticipated; even if you've given
them multiple ways to win, they may find another way entirely. If the player achieves the
victory condition, even in a completely unexpected way, he deserves credit for it. Don't
test to see if he got there in one of the ways that you intended; just test to see if he got
there. Of course, the game should prevent any form of cheating that it can reasonably
control
-
but finding an unusual way to win is not cheating so long as it is equally avail-
able to all players.
For a good many games, overcoming the intermediate-level challenges requires
only that the player meet all the lowest-level ones in sequence. That's how most
action games work, and what Figure 9.1 illustrates. If the player beats all the ene-
mies and gets past all the obstacles, he finishes the level. If he finishes all the levels,
he wins the game.
In more complex games, the player may have a choice of ways to approach an inter-
mediate-level challenge. Suppose the explicit top-level challenge—the victory
condition—in a war game consists of defeating all the enemy units, and the atomic
challenge consists of destroying one enemy unit. The simple and obvious strategy
is apparently to destroy all the enemy units one by one, but the player isn't likely to
get that chance. Most war games include a production system for generating new
units, so even if the player can kill off enemy units one by one, his opponent can
probably produce new ones faster than he can destroy them. Disrupting the ene-
my's production system is often an effective strategy, while protecting his own
production system ensures that he can eventually overwhelm the enemy with
superior numbers. Neither the specification of the victory condition nor the atomic
