Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
particularly strong as a reward for successfully overcoming a demanding challenge.
You can also deliver a bit of the stor y through narrative : Watching a cut-scene, for
example, gives the player a moment to relax.
You will find it easiest to var y the pacing in games that involve avatar travel
through a linear space, because you can control the sequence in which the player
confronts challenges. Games that give the player freedom to explore at will give
you less control. In genres that use multipresent interaction models rather than
avatar- or party-based ones, you may have little control at all. For example, in a
real-time strategy game, the pacing depends to a large degree on the player's own
style of play. Those who attack aggressively experience a faster pace than those who
slowly build up huge armies before attacking.
OVERALL PACING
Although the pacing of a level should vary from time to time (depending on the
genre), the overall pacing of the level should either remain steady or become more
rapid as the player nears the end. A longstanding tradition in action games, and
many other genres as well, calls for the inclusion of a
boss
to defeat at the end of
the level: a particularly difficult challenge. Victory, and the end of the level, reward
the player for defeating the boss, and this sometimes includes a cache of resources
or treasure as well. Bosses, although something of a cliché, fit neatly into games
with a Hero's Journey story structure. Chapter 13 discusses bosses in greater detail.
Levels should not, in general, get easier and easier as they go along. If the player
does well,
positive feedback
may come into play to make the game easier, and you
will need to design the level, or the core mechanics, to reduce that effect. Chapter
11 discusses positive feedback at length, including various means of limiting it.
Tutorial Levels
Years ago, video games shipped with large manuals that explained how to play the
games. Designers had no other way to teach the player because the distribution
media (cartridges and floppy disks) couldn't hold enough data to spare any room
for tutorial levels. Nowadays, however, all games should be designed so that the
player can start playing immediately. Games still use manuals, mostly in electronic
form, but for detailed reference information rather than instructions.
TIP
If your game
is complex enough
to need a manual,
be sure to make the
manual available for
download from a web
site or page dedicated
to the game. Players
lose manuals.
Instead of instructions, games offer
tutorial levels
—early levels that teach the player
how to play. Every commercial game except the simplest ones should include one
or more tutorial levels. Although tutorial levels require more time and effort to
build than a manual does to write, tutorial levels have the tremendous advantage
that they let the player learn in a hands-on fashion. Players learn physical activi-
ties, such as how the control devices function in the game, far more quickly if they
can try the actions for themselves.
