Since I was immobilised during the Christmas period I had a chance to catch up on some gaming, after all to make games one must learn from other games. I decided to focus my attention on smaller games rather than epic blockbuster titles such as the new 'Call of Duty' since I was creating a small game myself. What really struck my about titles like Geometry wars and games like Peggle is how little the player actually has to know in order to play these games.
To take Peggle as an example:
All the player has to do is shoot a ball at these circular objects and get combos/points etc. That's all they have to do and yet the game is incredibly addictive and enjoyable. Of course the game is by no means simple and there is a lot of maths/physics etc. but the game handles all that. While I couldn't have that sort of extreme simplicity due to the nature of my game, I could ,however, simplify my game.
The other thing I was beginning to realise is that my game demands too much on the part of the player. They have to learn too much about the game before they can start really playing it. Sure some players might enjoy that type of learning curve, but most won't (including myself).
With this in mind I went about planning how to simplify my game. I first got rid of the easy to remove obstacles, I had two game modes, so I got rid of the free for all aspect completely. Thankfully getting rid of this mode didn't have any knock on effect to the programs structure. This is because when 'getting rid' of something, I just removed the option to initiate it from the team select mode. This meant that it was still within the program but it just wasn't being used.
Once I got rid of a few more niggling/annoying game play elements it struck me that I needed to do more to feedback to the player. This decision though came at a price as I would have to delay my play testing time by a week.
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