Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
PUZZLE GAMES
Give the player time to think.
Puzzle-solving is problem-solving, and it knows
no timetable. Few players enjoy being forced to solve puzzles under time pressure.
(
Tet r is
, a famous exception, at least lets the player pause the game.) You may not be
able to offer the player multiple difficulty levels due to the complexity of balancing
puzzle games—for further discussion of this issue, see Chapter 20, “Artificial Life
and Puzzle Games”—which is another reason that time to think becomes impor-
tant. Either create puzzles that give the player complete freedom to think things
through before acting or allow him to pause the game and study the screen for a
while.
Layouts
For games that involve travel, especially avatar-based games, the layout of the space
significantly affects the player's perception of the experience. Over the years, a few
common patterns have emerged, which this section introduces in simplified form.
You should not hesitate to create any layout that your game needs.
Open Layouts
In an open layout, the player benefits from almost entirely unconstrained move-
ment. An open layout corresponds to the outdoors, with an avatar in principle free
to wander in any direction at any time. Even levels with open layouts, though, may
include a few small regions that cannot be entered without difficulty or can be
entered by only a single path (such as passing through a door into a building). War
games make extensive use of open layouts,
Battlefield 1942
being a particularly suc-
cessful example. Role-playing games offer open layouts while the player goes
adventuring outdoors, but they typically switch to network or combination layouts
(described later) when the party goes indoors or underground.
Linear Layouts
A linear layout requires the player to experience the game's spaces in a fixed
sequence with no side corridors or branches. It does not mean that the spaces are
actually arranged in a line (see
Figure 12.1
). A player following a linear path can
move only to the next area or to the previous area and does not have to make any
decisions about where to go next. A game in which all levels use linear layouts is
often said to be
on rails
because, like a train on a track, the traveler goes wherever
the predefined route takes her. Ordinarily, the player has no reason to go backward
in a linear layout unless she forgot to pick up something that she needs. Linear lay-
outs often require players to pass through one-way doors that actually prevent
them from going back, so long as they have collected everything they need to go
on. Be sure you don't lock a player out of a region that contains an item essential to
her later progress—an elementary level design error.
