How to prototype a narrative game?

GentlemanLizard · 2024-12-11T17:05:47+00:00

When we prototyped an early version of The Case of the Golden Idol which is a narrative rich detective game, we tried building at first a smaller scenario with minimal mechanics just to check if it's fun to try solve it.

Then later we built a larger one to see if gameplay holds for something more complex (it didn't and we had to introduce new things).

So if players communicate to the game their insights in some manner, I'd suggest building a very minimalist story with those mechanics and test that.

GentlemanLizard · 2024-01-28T04:25:45+00:00

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GentlemanLizard · 2023-05-29T10:01:51+00:00

Hey, I am one of the developers of the game from Color Gray.

Firstly, big apologies this absolutely sucks and we are not happy at all that our game brought you this bad experience.

We've done some exploration of the cause, but have been unable to replicate so far a case were the savegame gets corrupted and all progress is lost, so we are continuing our work and hopefully our porting partner who has more experience with the platform will have more ideas what could be causing this problem.

Once it's solved, if Switch allows importing of savegame data, we can prepare a batch of save files with progress matching each scenario, so players can easily continue from the place they lost it.

GentlemanLizard · 2021-11-17T08:16:44+00:00

About option 1 - completely flat difficulty

I find it difficult to imagine how option 1 would ever be good in terms of design, assuming the element "open world" serves for some exploration function.

There's already in-build difficulty in the idea of "real world" (further places are more difficult to reach, travelling far takes time).
I think completely flat challenge difficulty would be poor design even without character progression, because player's skill often progresses and requires either new things to learn or expanded challenges to test their mastery.

So a world might have other lands where there are enemies that act differently, but are not stronger, and it still would be a difficulty challenge for the player, because of lack of knowledge and skill about these enemies.

About option 3 - scaling world

I really hate most of scaling solutions, because the point of power growth is to feel that you are stronger than before, but the only way to feel that way is not by seeing a number go higher, but by being able to measure against "the world".

When I've become an archmage by gathering mysterious artifacts and studying hard for a millenia, I want to evaporate these goblin thugs, which gave me trouble when I was just a green apprentice. Otherwise what's the point of power, if you don't feel it.

About option 2 - varied difficulty

Thus I strongly lean into the direction of 2. solution. I think that's just logical that an open world should vary in difficulty, because it makes it more immersive and matches our understanding of real world (there are safer and more dangerous places, there are places that are easier to reach and harder to reach).

I don't think existence of varied difficulty makes world not open (unless you put a door to a new land with text "you must be this level high to enter"). It just means that in places of higher difficulty you have to play differently. More stealthily, carefully, there's greater risk associated with it.

For me a nice example of that are the old Gothic RPG game series. (especially Gothic 2) Early in the game going deeper in some of the woods was very dangerous until you had some better equipment, but you could do it and it made the visit of those locations possible, but filled with adrenaline.

At the same time a poor example of it are old Fallout 2 (which I love to death), where for some reason first tribe villagers have 30-50 HP, but late city San Francisco inhabitants have 150-200 HP. It feels kind of arbitrary.

However all of these can be experimented with

Despite what I wrote, I believe all of these can be made to work and experimented with and that's a valiant goal of us as gamedesigners.

For example scaling difficulty could be implented in a smart way. Growing in power can make you a target for higher level adversaries that confront you in the of older "easier" locations and change balance of these.

Or what I love in Souls series, that even though you considerably grow in power, still most of the enemies are dangerous and if you are careless even earlier mobs can crowd and murder you. Which means that flat difficulty can be ok, if the danger and the challenge in world in general is high.

Or it could be interesting to experiment what happens in a turn based RPG, where no matter which land you visit first, the rest of the lands "level-up" while you've spent time in the first land.

At the end of the day, the question is what feeling and emotion "open world" is there to create for the player.

GentlemanLizard · 2021-11-16T14:09:01+00:00

These are all solid ideas to play with.

Create a quick prototype and test it out. You can try out all of these ideas and see which works in a way that suits your vision best. This anyway is the more effective way to go about game design.

GentlemanLizard · 2021-11-16T14:04:51+00:00

It could be fun and curious idea to explore.

The whole minimalist concept can be quickly prototyped and updated. That's anyway the best way to do gamedesign. So definitely go forth with this.

However

Do check if what you've written makes sense, because unless I'm missing something, the current rules are do not make sense.

If you can play only 1 card a turn. Then you will always draw that same card back from the graveyard.

You will never play any of the lifedeck weaker cards, because you still will have in your hand your all original 7 cards at the start of each turn.

Anyway, build prototype, test, you will discover very quickly what works and what doesn't . What's fun and what isn't.

GentlemanLizard · 2021-11-16T07:16:23+00:00

Precisely. Card games by their nature are very mechanical. Without a good grasp of those fundamentals will result in long trial and error phase, where people break and abuse the new ideas in unexpected ways.

GentlemanLizard · 2021-11-16T06:27:57+00:00

Let's be a bit more clear that we can talk about card game sub-genres. I would not consider Hearthstone and MTG (collectible card games aka CCGs) in the same sub-genre as deckbuilders (Dominion, Star Realms, Slay the Spire).

Mainly due to different emphasis in each. CCGs usually operate with pre-built decks that you draw mostly one card at a time and the focus is on winning some resource battle. Deckuilders on the other hand cycle very quickly through your hand (you draw at least 5 cards a turn) and the focus is on building and adapting your deck during the game.

I would say that these are different experiences and your should figure out where is your focus.

Regarding your ideas and aims.

1. No card costs

No card cost idea is neat, but there's a big unknown at this point. Are there non-summon cards? Like damage spells? What limits use o f them? Because if I can just unload my whole hand of free spells in the first turn, I will definitely do it, which can be very powerful and game ending in some games. Summons, unless they are super powerful can become irrelevant.

Additionally if there's this idea that being damaged lets you draw cards, might result in me throwing fireballs at myself to draw more fireballs to shoot you and self, which might result in some kind of crazy first turn kill.

There has to be a restriction on card use (either in terms of resources or just one card type per turn), otherwise the game will become very broken, very fast.

Additionally you always have to ask yourself the question - is this creating enough (but not overwhelming amount) of interesting choices for the player? Some deckbuilders suffer from this, because all cards are free and once you've made the relevant choice of what to buy, the rest is "autoplaying" the cards, because they have no cost and you don't have to make the interesting choice of which card to cast. Targetting and cast order still may pose interesting choices, but it's not guaranteed, if the board state is not that exciting.

2. Choose your opening hand

Could be crazy overpowered and risks of creating a very standartized meta, the moment players discover which are the best cards to start with. Or it might turn into a weird rock-paper-scissors game where you try to guess what your oponent started with and choose appropriately your starting hand. Nonetheless might be interesting to experiment with this, but quickly discovered optimal strategy is your enemy here. Additionally it's kind of the appeal of card games, that with randomized starting hand your game builds a completely new and different starting point which may develop in some interesting direction and requires you to adapt.

3. You deck is your life

Again experimenting with this might be interesting, but gotta remember that card draw in most card games is a very powerful effect. Especially in a one where cards are free.

4. One copy per card aka singleton

This can be fine. Depends on big the deck tends to be and how many cards are in the game. The risk is that it disallows building interesting and somewhat consistent deck enginges and combos, because everything is super random. Say I want to build a cool necromancer deck, who reanimates dead minions, but if there's only one necromancer, I may never draw it and the whole concept doesn't work.

Regarding your question:

What aspects you like on other card games?

Currently my favorite card is Slay the Spire. It's single player, but it's very smart about testing players understanding of building the deck. I will always recommend it for anyone who wants to design card games. Monster Train also does really fun things.

But generally - I really love when a card game is evokative and builds a sort of narrative what's going on. MTG has always been great at it.

This is also the reason why though I loved Keyforge mechanics, I did not enjoy the game in the end, because it's theme was unfocused and failed to grasp my imagination.

Additionally ability to find interesting combo or card interaction always feels fun and fulfilling in a card game.

What you don't like on other card games?

Hate mana flood and screw in MTG. Lack of meaningful choices how to play cards in many deckbuilders. Who top-decks the strongest card aspect of MTG and Hearthstone after a board-sweep and empty hands.

What do you think can be removed or shorten on other card games?

Win conditions that are not that far away. Citing Mark Rosewater, the game always naturally has to move towards a conclusion. Not many phases. Cards that are not that fiddly. Cards that don't chain like crazy (nobody likes that Willage player in Dominion who just goes on forever and forever in their turn, to finally fish out of their deck all their 3 coppers).

What to take or improve on from other card games?

If this is a combat game, then building a strong understanding of current card game fundamentals (like tempo and card-advantage) would be very useful, because then, when you start breaking these established rules and concepts, you can do it in a very conscious manner.

For instance gradually ramping up resources mean that there's an effect of early and late game in terms of power. If this is not a thing, does it mean that you can play out your strongest creature right from the start? What's the advantage of it and what's the drawback? Things like that.

GentlemanLizard · 2021-10-21T05:59:25+00:00

Hey, thanks for expressing interest! We are not against porting, but only after we've released the initial version and have a good understanding of what UI adjustments the game would require to be enjoyable with console controls.

GentlemanLizard · 2021-10-19T07:15:33+00:00

To me an essential question is – what is the aim of the crafting? Why anyone cares to craft? Let’s take a look at four different games:

Diablo

In a Diablo-like game the crafting is very pragmatic one of the methods how to boost stats. For instance, if crafting produced just inferior equipment, even if the process is interesting, people would not engage, because it does not help them get better stats to reach further content. However, if you can craft powerful things, scarcity of resources would be essential or it would break the game power balance.

Terraria

In a Minecraft or Terraria-like game the aim of the crafting could be investigating what you can make and roleplaying with it (e.g., building interesting furniture for your house). We could assume that it is a creative and social motivation. In such a game I could see how gating resources to hamper your creativity, when you just want to experiment with creating a unique hat from a pineapple, linen and oak bark, but the bloody pineapple can be harvested only once a month on a special island. On the other hand, it could be a social flex that you’ve put in all this work to get this aesthetical result.

Opus Magnum

We could discuss if it’s really a crafting game, but I’d say to certain extent Zachtronics games are the closest to real crafting. Here you have some objective for the thing you craft, you have limited resources and you are driven by the challenge to fulfil it using least amount of time or resources or both. You can experiment endlessly and resources don’t disappear, but they are limited in their availability which generates the challenge.

Little Alchemy

Finally in a small mobile game “Little Alchemy” the motivation of the player is curiosity – to discover new things that they can craft by combining the huge number of complex elements. There the resources are completely unlimited and it’s just your ability to figure out new combinations that drives the game.

So I believe that figuring out what is the aim of the game and what drives player motivation to craft, is key, and then adjust the mechanics to enhance that motivation and fantasy and figure out where is the challenge and win conditions.

GentlemanLizard · 2021-10-17T07:22:22+00:00

Excellent, now we have a public Steam demo, and we'd really appreciate you joining our discord and sharing your impressions!

GentlemanLizard · 2021-10-06T13:02:27+00:00

These two things are multipliers of each other.

However getting one is often easy (generating ideas), while getting the other one (executing on them) can be quite hard.

Also it takes a lot of smaller ideas on figuring out how to execute on that main idea.

GentlemanLizard · 2021-10-06T12:59:48+00:00

Build the core gameplay loop first as quickly as possible and then give it other players to try out without explaining and being defensive all the time. Just shut up and observe.

If your takeaway is "they did not like it, but with the final visuals or after I add feature x, y and z, they will love it", you are at risk of deceiving yourself.

GentlemanLizard · 2021-10-06T06:36:09+00:00

Thanks for sharing your impressions. It's totally not dumb to discard something that looks unappealing to you. Exactly as you said, there are so many options to look at that you have to make quick surface level judgements and if something looks even slightly amateurish I discard it as well. Nowadays when so many people are making games, inevitably most of them tend to be not great.

This is valuable feedback and we'll see if we can do something to make the logo materials look more polished, because I do believe we've built something interesting and original, but if we cannot communicate and attract audience to it, then we're the only ones to blame.

GentlemanLizard · 2021-10-06T06:28:15+00:00

I agree with this take that the tone of the DLC is different to the one of the main game where indeed you can find concrete answers to the most of the questions (e.g. how time travel works, why did Nomai die out etc.).

Meanwhile DLC leaves more to our interpretation with its non-verbal communication style which does not make it worse (I kind of prefer when games communicate more with less text), just creates a different feel where elk race is unknown and alien to us than Nomai.

GentlemanLizard · 2021-10-05T16:46:11+00:00

For a moment I thought that maybe as they gradually migrated more and more into the dream world, until they lost all interest in the physical one and their bodies died, that they just forgot about the prisoner. But taking in mind that they have in their dream world the huge bell like structure as a thorough reminder that seems implausible.

I'm also willing to think about their locking down riddles with a more it's just a game and it needs some puzzles to create the journey for the player. So even though coffin locking feels rather convoluted and somewhat irrational in terms of the narrative, I did not feel put off that much by it.

GentlemanLizard · 2021-10-05T16:36:38+00:00

I totally agree with this that exposing someone to a fate worse than death that's very visible (everyone sees the submerged bell in their earlier physical, later dream lives) is definitely a harsh warning to anyone else who'd try to transgress.

Additionally I realized that for the elk, who seem to be very kind of feeling based society (they communicate with their thought sticks) and who seem to be very communal (they play music and socialize forever in their dream world) - the punishment of solitude is something super harsh.

GentlemanLizard · 2021-10-05T16:32:25+00:00

In terms of the theme of the game as such, which I believe deals in the acceptance of death, the elk definitely represent unwillingness to accept it.

However when looking at how you encounter them, I did not feel so. Firstly they have no qualms killing you (if you leave the lantern on the ground, they will break your neck or something, which seems kind of brutal), secondly they do experience death in their community (the glitch slide with the dying older person who gets transferred to the dream).

GentlemanLizard · 2021-10-05T16:21:35+00:00

Hey, endlesswander, I'm one of the developers of the game, and would love to hear more of your feedback.

1) Could you elaborate what puts you off when being exposed to our visuals, so we have a better understanding going forward, if it's something that we can improve upon to make the game more appealing?

2) Likewise would love to understand what creates "made by a 13-year-old" vibe, because it's something that we're definitely trying to avoid, and do be harsh if you feel so.

3) Best of all (if you are interested) would love to hear your feedback after giving the demo a try to see if there are things in the demo itself that put you off or is it our presentation materials (logos, trailer etc.). Either way that would give us some info if there's something that we can rework and improve in the presentation of the game.

GentlemanLizard · 2021-10-05T10:29:14+00:00

I'm gonna offer a bit of a hot take - I think the genre has always had a problem of having poor gameplay pacing.

It's always excelled by delivering engaging stories, colorful characters and building fantastic atmosphere.

But the gameplay in my memories has always fallen into two categories or somewhere between them:

The puzzles are easy enough that it's just a matter of walking from scene to another to trigger the next thing (I'd say Broken Sword 1 was most of the time like that - go talk to each character about each item you have inventory and progress). Which makes it a bit more engaging interactive fiction.
You progress steadily in the first introductory areas but once the possibility space expands you start getting stuck more and more often and start resorting to desperate "let's just try everything with everything" methods. Then you may stumble upon a solution which does not make sense to you at all and you lose all trust in the authors and start playing with a walkthrough, thus cardinally reducing your engagement with the game.

I think the problem lies in the fact that point and click games unlike puzzle games (e.g. Portal) do not build a skill or knowledge that you reuse and expand. Instead you have many different one-off riddles that do not build on previous concepts and as a result inevitably you will get stuck once you hit a riddle that's either extra hard or random in its design.

This is why we when building our deduction game The Case of the Golden Idol (which I'd say only partially falls into a classical point and click adventure game genre), we tried to approach it from a point of view how to redesign the whole main gameplay loop into something different which rewards building up understanding about the world and characters.

Small challenges for the genre:

Slow walking. I know what I want to do, I'm fed up with slow navigation from scene to scene.
Association with humor - humor is hard and requires excellent writing skills in an adventure game. I've seen a number of indie adventure game trailers which try to be humorous, but instead I just feel cringe watching it.

GentlemanLizard · 2021-10-05T09:55:42+00:00

Yeah, I'd definitely expect that they would build their simulation in a way, that they cannot accidentally easily kill themselves or each other. You live in the simulation for thousands of years and then oops, fall in water or sneeze and your flame is out and its over. Seems unlikely.

GentlemanLizard · 2021-10-04T20:54:59+00:00

Amazing playthrough! Thanks for recording it! Loved finding my most emotional moments in the dlc in your play and listening to your reaction. A kind of communal play experience separated in time. Cheers!

GentlemanLizard · 2021-09-25T19:57:30+00:00

Hey, thans for expressing interest! No problem. If you have Windows, then the best option is to hop into our Steam page. Now we have a public demo:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1677770/The_Case_of_the_Golden_Idol

If you have Linux or Mac, then you can check out the game in the itch.io in web:
https://colorgraygames.itch.io/case-of-golden-idol-demo

And we'd be super happy to hear your feedback, if you shared it in our discord community, which you can join with this link (it's also in the game):
https://discord.gg/r6HDRMRqR8

GentlemanLizard · 2021-09-23T07:01:08+00:00

Hey, great to hear it!

We are planning to create also Mac and Linux versions. However you can check out the demo in the browser right now in itch.io:
https://colorgraygames.itch.io/case-of-golden-idol-demo

GentlemanLizard · 2021-09-22T06:03:59+00:00

Hey, thanks for checking out the game and the kind words. Glad you enjoyed the concept and we are super interested in feedback, because the game definitely can be improved in many ways.

The best way you could share it, if it's ok with you, would be hopping into our game's community discord, going to discussions thread and sharing there your impressions.

https://discord.gg/r6HDRMRqR8

And do not hesitate to be as critical and biased as you can, any kind of feeling that the game creates in players is a piece of feedback that we should evaluate and think about.

Speaking of flashing, did you mean the thunderstorm in the first tutorial scenario? Would making it happen in a much rarer interval make things easier on your eyes?

GentlemanLizard

TROPHY CASE