In 2009 I was hired to create a game for advertising my clients products on the Agritechnica exhibition of that year. In the game, called Harvest Mania, the players harvests grain crops using a combine harvester, while benefitting from the products offered by my clients.
On the fair, it was great getting real feedback to the game — above all, kids seemed to have a good time, while parents liked the productivity-topic and the lack of violence. The Wiimote-control we implemented just 2 weeks before the fair also paid off: playing with a steering wheel made the game that much more accessible, and some visitors even wanted to take it home.
HarvestMania on John Deere’s fair booth, at AgriTechnica, Hannover, 2009
At the same time, the feedback revealed some significant problems and imbalances that need to be fixed, not to mention the lack of real content. So after the fair, we couldn’t put it online immediately.
Since then, the game has been on a hiatus due to my personal circumstances. Only recently have I resumed work on the project in order to finally release the game and have a closure.
One of the aspects that I felt needing a redesign is the scoring system. As I’m struggling with it, I decided to use writing to aid the process. Besides this primary purpose, the post will not go much into other aspects of the game for now, so sorry if things don’t make sense to you. I do plan to write a Developer Diary #0 at some time in the future though. Continue reading “Harvest Mania Developer Diary #1″
I can now confirm that my game TRAUMA will be released on this Monday, the 8th of August 2011. The game will be available at http://www.traumagame.com for 5 eur. There will be downloads for PC, Mac and Linux. They will be DRM-Free and there will be an option to try the game online for free (although the server might have troubles to handling the load initially).
Additionally, I’m happy to announce that the game will be also be available on Steam on the very same day. And yes, dear Mac users, it will be on the Mac version of Steam as well.
This time on the Monster Hunter Podcast: Operation Cherry Blossom. The Well-Done Podcast and us are joining forces to bring MHP3 to the West. And to use Switch-Axes with motion-controls.
Oh look at that. After the rather rocky way through Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, I practically devoured the successor, Aria of Sorrow. I finished the game in two days or so. It took me around 8 hours or so. Just two late night sessions. Needless to say I enjoyed it a great deal more than Harmony of Dissonance. Here is why.
Consistent Style – Or perhaps I would say MORE consistent style. It’s Castlevania we are talking about after all. But one thing that really confused me about Harmony of Dissonance was how arbitrary everything looked. Here is a selection of some of my favorites.
Wha…?
I see the merit of having some more far out, psychedelic designs for some of the very advanced stages of the game. But the impressions above are taken from the most innocuous hallways quite early in the game. One minute you fight your way trough a medieval castle. Then you walk through a door and – bam – LSD city. Aria of Sorrow is different. It gets insane from time to time but in a much more restrained, controlled fashion
Varied Level Design – In Harmony of Dissonance, there are basically just two kinds of rooms. The first one is an empty hallway with a floor all the way at the bottom of the screen and a ceiling all the way up at the top. The second one is a vertical staircase. This is pretty much the majority of all the rooms in Harmony of Dissonance.
I swear, these are not textures but excerpts from the actual level map.
Of course this is an over-exaggeration but there are plenty of such highly repetitive passages in the game. Aria of Sorrow has them too, yet not as prominent. It seems like they always manage to mix them up somehow. Even if it is by the simple act of lowering the ceiling can go a long way.
Engaging Magic System – Harmony of Dissonance has a very confusing system for magic spells. You can find 5 spell books. You can equip one of them at a time. You can also switch between 6 sub-weapons by picking up the corresponding pickups. When you equip an spell book, your sub-weapons turn into spells. Which weapon turns into which spell is difficult to figure out. You need to test it but you can’t switch between sub-weapons freely. It’s a complex system that requires experimentation. But at the same time, it’s a system that makes experimentation difficult and tedious.
Aria of Sorrow is different. You collect spells in the form of “souls”. They are basically pickups that are sometimes dropped by monsters. Each monster type drops a different soul. You can equip any soul at any given time to cast a magic spell – often related to the monster the soul belongs to. It’s a much more simple and much more rewarding system. There is something extremely satisfying about being able to absorb the powers of ANY enemy and turning it against them. Also, because every monster can drop a soul, there is potential for going on Pokémon-like collecting sprees.
Generally, it’s nice to see a series evolve and gradually improve over time. There is just one thing that bugs me. Harmony of Dissonance came out AFTER Symphony of the Night. I noticed that Symphony of the Night didn’t have the issues that Harmony of Dissonance had. Perhaps Harmony of Dissonance was made by a different, less experienced team? Or perhaps it was a failed experiment? Be that as it may, Aria of Sorrow was finally the first Castlevania that was as enjoyable and polished to me as a Metroid title. I’m torn about which way to go next? Dawn of Sorrow, which is the continuation of Aria of Sorrow on the Nintendo DS? Or Symphony of the Night, which is the game every modern Castlevania game is based upon? Any suggestions?
Time for another backlog update. I finished another 5 games. Actually, I even completed 7 but haven’t realized it until I started writing this post.
Monster Hunter Tri I completed all missions in Monster Hunter Tri and, as I wrote in my final diary entry, I consider it completed for the sake of the backlog.
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker It wasn’t technically on my original backlog list. And this is actually going to be a theme of this update. Nonetheless, I have been playing Peace Walker for QUITE some time. I recorded a couple of tutorial videos, I wrote about the Wi-Fi functions and some potential sexist themes. It’s a great game and I was enjoying it quite a bit. I might return to it when the HD version comes out. I’m curious if my almost maxed-out savegame will give me access to all of it’s content
Portal 2 Again, technically not on my original backlog list. I got it to play it with a friend (and because I was curious). I wrote this little piece. Otherwise I find it quite hard to say anything about it. It’s quite hermetic. Perhaps there is such thing as too much streamlining and polish after all.
Final Fantasy: Crysis Core An entry I had on my backlog for quite a while. It’s clearly a game made for fans of Final Fantasy 7, especially considering the ending. I liked FF7 so I had my fun with the game. I wrote a little about the polarized gameplay in the end game missions and the deluxe edition. I still want to write a Game Design Review about a game mechanic that gains a curious significance during the ending sequence. Stay tuned…
Don’t Take it Personally, Babe, It Just Ain’t Your Story again, not really on my original backlog list. But I was curious and the story drew me in. It’s an indie game anyway. I summarized my impressions in an article already. The game is fairly short and I might give it another playtrough to see a different ending. I recommend to check it out. Hey, it’s free!
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance And finally, a super-old entry from 3 years ago. My recent effort to finally finish it payed off. Good thing too! I started paying attention to how games like this create a seamless flow of action. Right now, I’m actually playing the successor: Aria of Sorrow. It was on the same module and it’s also on the backlog list…
So while I finished 7 games, my backlog was only reduced by 4. But I thought of introducing two new rules I have been actually practicing all this time:
Disregard any backlog rules it it’s a co-op game a friend wants to play with you. No reason to give up the precious social gaming for backlog vanity.
Disregard any backlog rules for indie games. I don’t want to miss out on important indie titles just because I have been busy playing some silly mainstream title from years ago. Indie games are often quite short so they shouldn’t be clogging my backlog anyway.
Of course, completing any game should always add to the 5 game count. I want to always reward myself for finishing games.
So I completed another batch of 5 games. In return, I will get Catherine. Technically, I could get it anyway. Apparently there are some co-op challenges in it a friend wants to play with me. But having played 7 games already I need only 3 to complete the next batch anyway. Here are some ideas.
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Playing it right now. I’m over 80% and doing well. Should be finished very soon.
Scribblenauts I seriously should pick up this game again. It was on my ‘want to finish this next’ list for quite some time now.
Catherine I will start playing it as soon as it arrives – obviously. Apparently it’s not that long but super-hard. :/
Demon’s Souls Speaking of super-hard. The servers for Demon’s Souls may be being turning off soon. There are some really interesting and innovative online functions in there I really would like to experience first-hand before it’s too late.
Wow, that was quick. After only 6-7 hours, I finished Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance. Surprisingly, it took me less time to finish the game from scratch than I invested in a previous, unfinished playtrough. It just shows that the biggest challenge with this game is it’s lack of guidance. In hindsight, writing down where I wanted to go next helped only marginally. The most useful help turned out to be the Let’s Play.
I used the above let’s play by YouTube user newfiebangaa. It’s a solid play-through. The commentary was a bit obnoxious from time to time but generally quite solid. The videos are well produced, which is no surprise considering that newfiebangaa documented over 320 games this way (!!!). The way I used them was to play for a while and to watch the Let’s Play of the parts I already completed afterwards. That way I could tell if I missed something and quickly find out if I was heading in the wrong direction.
But the game turned out to be actually quite well structured and I had almost no difficulties at all. The individual areas unlock in a regular and logical fashion. It’s just never communicated clearly so it’s very easy to get lost due to unnecessary backtracking. One thing the Let’s Play helped me a lot with was the combat. The game has a complex magic special attack system I never bothered to experiment with. To me it always seemed like different variations on smart-bombs that would kill everything on the screen. Newfiebangaa on the other hand was actively searching for a setup that could be used as a secondary attack. He favored the more economical, less destructive spells so he could use them more frequently. This also changed the way I would approach the game.
If there is one thing about Harmony of Dissonance I really liked was the juicy combat. There are very few difficult enemies in the game. Most of them die with just one hit but there are lots of them. This would usually make up for dull and repetitive gameplay. But as already mentioned, every enemy dies in a spectacular fashion. Skeletons burst into piles of bones that come tumbling down with a clattering sound. Other enemies spontaneously self-combust. The combat is not necessarily rewarding because it is deep or challenging. It just feels good to plow through the hordes of zombies and ghosts.
I was reminded of this recent video by indie developer Joakim Sandberg.
What stumped me about this analysis is when he mentioned the importance of enemies, that die with one hit. When creating an action game, a beginning game designer’s first intuition is create enemies, that take a couple of shots to kill. It seems to be a reasonable way to generate a challenge and require players to use strategy – gameplay in short. But you might just end up with a game where each enemy is a tedious bullet sponge. Getting anywhere becomes a chore. Something I noticed even in such simple experiments as my Cybersecurity Emergency Assange.
Of course it depends on the kind of game you want to make. But a more reasonable apporach seems to be to balance the enemies in such a way that they can be defeated while the player is moving through the level. From time to time, there can be an individual, more tougher enemy to introduce a break, intentionally slow the player down or simply add variation. If you think about games in this way, enemies become not a challenge but a tool to create rhythm and establish a seamless flow of action.
I feel this is where I think Harmony of Dissonance excels in. The fact that you can slide using the shoulder buttons right from the start of the game enables players to move very swiftly through the game. The juicy enemy death animations are the kicker. In it’s best moments, the game becomes a pleasant, fluid joyride celebrated by a confetti of bones, blood and burning particles.
I already started the next game in the series, Aria of Sorrow. It seems to build upon the values established by the predecessor. I will keep notes as I continue. Stay tuned!
The Lego games are a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine. I enjoy Lego a great deal so I find them already appealing in this regard. But they are also interesting from a game design standpoint. The forgiving difficulty suggest a shallow experience aimed at younger players. But it turns out to be a necessity when you start playing the game as it is meant to be played – cooperatively. Instead of difficulty, there is a surprisingly deep and consistent language of abilities that can be used to explore and re-experience the game’s world. It’s pedantic completionism as usual in some regard. But due to the light-hearted nature of the game in general, it always retains at least a spark of innocent discovery. “Oh look, it turns into a catapult!”
All the Lego games lack polish in some areas. One of them is often level design. Playing through LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean with my girlfriend recently, we hit one or two rather nasty snags. They are mostly associated with poorly designed boss fights or confusing actions sequences. They seem to be only there to satisfy the requirements of re-telling the story of the licensed movies. So I always wondered what would happen if the team made a Lego game that isn’t based on a license.
For this reason, I was very excited when Lego City Stories was announced at this year’s E3. Not only is this a first proper Lego game that isn’t tied to a second license. Open-world sandbox mechanics could potentially be a good match with the playfulness of Lego anyway. It made me consider other Lego themes that would work well with games. And if you are a Lego enthusiast, you might see where this is going…
Ka-pew-pew
Lego in space. But specifically, the Blacktron (Future Generation) / M-Tron era. The Lego space sets made quite an evolution. The started out as being very close to actual NASA moon landings hardware. I’m guessing that this (sadly) wasn’t exciting enough. So they went more colorful and Sci-Fi. I think they peaked at the Blacktron / M-Tron era during the early 90ies. The sets had a striking look with neon color schemes. Each “fraction” had a unique technical gimmick going on. The Blacktron guys had space ships with modular cockpits. The M-Tron dudes had magnets. How do they work?
I think the most important part was that there was no CLEAR good vs. evil. Sure, it was implied that the Blacktron guys were more sinister in nature. But it was just a nuance rather than a solid, embedded narrative. It was up to the kids to invent the story.
Since then, I feel like the space theme wend downhill. Ice Planet looked ok. After that things went steeply downhill. There were multiple iterations of either space police or humans fighting aliens. Right now, they seem to be doing X-Com. The problem with those sets is that they never really inspire any imagination. The sets pretty much spell out the story. A a child can do with them is to re-play the same tired trope over and over again. It seems like it would get old fast. And to top it off, there is less technical ingenuity at play.
Apparently the talented concept artist Niklas Jannson shares this fascination with Lego space. He sat down and created a comprehensive set of wonderful concepts drawings to re-invent the theme. The designs are pretty radical. He came up with new parts, better articulated mini-figs, some beautiful anime-inspired robots, space ships and vehicles. He even attempted at fleshing out the backstory and bringing it together into a complete Lego space universe. I find the sheer amount of material and the attention to detail quite shocking. I doubt that the Blacktron era will ever return as video game. But what Niklas has created offers a stunning peek into what could happen if it did.
So if anybody knows people, who work at TT Games, please send them the link, will you? For anybody else, it’s simply a wonderful source of inspiration for all sorts of Sci-Fi related projects. Enjoy!
This time on the Monster Hunter Podcast: Gimme an Egg. Our bourgeois monster hunters embark on a quest to defeat monsters and needs an egg urgently. Give us an egg. And a blessed one of you can.
So I spent the weekend to whip up a real Trailer for TRAUMA. Here it is.
Nothing too special visually but I’m really happy I was able to get the quotes from Michaël Samyn, Michael Abbott and Kellee Santiago. I really think they embody the kind of audience I created the game for. There was a hilarious (and by hilarious I mean horrifying) moment where I sent the game to Kellee so she could try the most recent version and the download system I prepared so meticulously over the last months ended up delivering 0 byte files.
But this was pretty much the last step before release. It also seems like my negotiations with the publishing platforms could be wrapping up soon. I want to test drive my home-baked distribution system and I’m good to go. As already mentioned, I will release the game in time for this year’s GamesCom. I want to have it out before my 30th birthday.
I have started playing Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance. Again. This is the 3rd time that I started this game now. You might remember how I posted about the game in November 2008. Even though the game is supposedly relatively short, I have never managed to play it trough. Here is what happened.
2008 Attempt – Over 8 hours into the game, I was distracted by other activities and stopped playing the game for a couple of weeks. When I returned, I was completely unable to remember what to do next. A significant portion of the castle was accessible but I couldn’t remember where to go next. I wandered around for an hour or so before deciding to abandon this playtrough and start from scratch.
2010 Attempt – I started a new attempt last year. This time I was prepared. I printed out a map of the castle and used a pen to mark down where I have been already. Also I wrote down all the areas that I can’t access yet because I lack some key upgrades. This time I played the game for 3 hours and 20 minutes. I realized quickly that the necessity of having the map and a pen ready adds some significant burden on playing the game. It contributed to the fact that I got distracted again. Also, it wasn’t really effective. The map didn’t really help me with figuring out my current goal. It documented where I have been but not where I needed to go next.
2011 Attempt – This time I keep the documentation to a minimum. I will write down the major powerups I picked up and the bosses I defeated on my iPhone. This way I can use a walktrough to figure out where to go next. Besides this, I will also write down in which direction I wanted to go next after each play session. I’m using a let’s play as a reference. Also, I ordered the official strategy duide. I’m dedicated to finish this sucker.
My struggle with the game is a good example of the weaknesses with the Metroidvania structure. It’s a philosophy that relies heavily on the dynamic exploration of a world. Special precautions need to be take to make sure the players don’t get lost. A series that does a good job is Metroid. I played all of the parts on the Game Boy Advance and never had any such problems. Each section of the world looks different and there is a good balance between linear tunnels and crossings so even if you get lost, there are never too many wrong turns you can take anyway. There is some attempt at visual diversity in Harmony of Dissonance but due to repetitive level design, each hallway ends up looking the same. Even worse, there are a lot of branches and forks so getting lost is almost guaranteed. Strangely, there is also no tool to help you find your bearings – like a boss compass for example. The fact that you switch between two almost identically looking castles just adds insult to injury.
Anthony Burch touches on a related topic in his Rev Rant on Metroidvanias.
He points out that Metroidvanias force a hardcore completionist, cartographer mindset onto players. Player who aren’t patient enough will fail. In the same vain, once you lose track of your goals once, there is no way to ease yourself back into the game. It’s either everything or nothing.
Perhaps this is why Metroidvanias are so popular among the core crowd. In order to get trough Harmony of Dissonance, I guess I need to channel my inner gamer. Let’s do this.
The Game Design Scrapbook is a second blog of group of three game designers from Germany. On our first blog, Game Design Reviews we describe some games we played and point out various interesting details. Unfortunately, we found out that we also need some place to collect quick and dirty ideas that pop into our minds. Hence, welcome to Game Design Scrapbook. You will encounter wild, random rantings. Many of then incoherent. Some of them maybe even in German. If you don't like it, you might enjoy Game Design Reviews more.
Wha…?
I swear, these are not textures but excerpts from the actual 
with my girlfriend recently, we hit one or two rather nasty snags. They are mostly associated with poorly designed boss fights or confusing actions sequences. They seem to be only there to satisfy the requirements of re-telling the story of the licensed movies. So I always wondered what would happen if the team made a Lego game that isn’t based on a license.
. I’m dedicated to finish this sucker.
