Lessons from Kongregate

NOTE: As a Blogger noob, I didn't realize that recycling an old, unused post would retain the name, so while the URL for this posting is "puzzles-in-my-MMO" - it's actually about casual games. Sorry!

This is the start of a series I'll be doing on simple lessons from "simple" games. Kongregate is a well-known casual and amateur gaming hub which produces an amazingly polished variety of games using Flash. Created by Jim and Emily Greer, Kongregate is something of a "YouTube meets gaming."

As part of my current set of tasks to develop mini-games for Stargate Worlds, myself and the rest of our mini-game team have undertaken a fun survey of casual gaming to learn a little more about what Flash is good at modeling, and where it is weak. Along the way, I've taken some notes of various games as discussion points of success versus failure. In this series, I'll share one or two lessons from each game under discussion.

Game One: Particles (by Ragdollsoft)
Lesson A: Lack of feedback produces tension - sometimes.
Lesson B: Physics is one of Flash's strong points.

Particles is a relatively simple game that looks like a physics demo but has an addictive quality that comes from good music, clean animation, and - interestingly enough - a lack of feedback on the player's progress.

It is common to give the player some form of scoring feedback, no matter the game. Scoring is a means in which you give the player a sense of urgency and accomplishment while the game is still in play - with a glance to the score bar, the player has incentive to perform better. A game without a score is like playing poker with no money - it lacks tension and just becomes a mechanical exercise.

In Particles, the game deliberately hides the scoring until the very end, at which time it scores you with a letter grade and an amount of time played. By hiding the score, this game forces you to concentrate on the one rule of the game: avoid the (steadily increasing) red balls. A score interface would take the player out of the "emotional pit" of the game. Tension is thus increased - you know you are being graded, and the game will likely last under five minutes, so all attention turns to the action of the game itself. If the game were much longer than it is, and should the progression of adding more obstacles (balls) to the mix be slower, the game would likely fail, in my opinion.

Speaking of the action of the game, the utter speed in which the player can move their own ball, matched with the inelastic collisions of the red obstacle balls, produces some interesting and engaging physics effects. Watching for a group of balls to strike each other and slow down quickly became my strategy for the game - I would follow slow obstacle balls and use them as shields against more fast moving balls.

Simply put, object physics is fun, even if it smacks of unreality. Between my fire blaster and my energy blaster in City of Heroes, I choose energy every time because of the visceral joy of knockback, knockup, and throwing opponents around when you win. Other VWs should consider the investment to more robust physics - not only will the game feel less stiff (a common complaint of many MMOs), but it just might save on the animation budget as well.

Take home for creating virtual worlds: Tension is a difficult goal in any MMO or VW. Generally speaking, the most common method of creating and maintaining tension in the player is to build a box for the player(s), put them in it, and give them a puzzle to solve. Unfortunately, an MMO is both forgiving and unforgiving to players, in that it takes more time than in a casual game to recover from a poor decision, and adds the fact that the time scale of player investment in an MMO is such that any puzzle or tense situation pales in comparison with the many hours of non-tense gameplay.

Game Two: Doeo (by Raitendo)
Lesson: Collecting things is fun. Collecting things and watching the world change is more fun.

Doeo has a simple and slightly unsettling concept - pink Doeos appear in rapid succession, and your job is to simply mouseover them. Like Particles, there is a single axis of input and interaction, but in Doeo there is a payoff when Doeo are caught, and as the level progresses.

Doeo, in true Galaga fashion, appear in a preset pattern, and just like in Galaga if you catch them all before they settle in, you get a scoring bonus. Thus, this game triggers the part of our brains and personalities of "gotta catch 'em all." This, in and of itself, is fun, and the presentation of the alarming-looking Doeo makes this game a fun little production.

However, the real lesson is this - in addition to collecting Doeo and scoring big when you get them all, the Doeo are integrated into the landscape and world of the game itself - as they appear and disappear, buildings fall, mountains turn to valleys, flowers grow, and generally the world mutates before your eyes in an artistic pattern that is just as pleasing as the game itself.

Thus we come to:
Take home for creating virtual worlds: Doeo would be fun but somewhat flat if not for the artistic ebb and flow of the game world itself. Pushing this game from a simple collection sim to a work of beauty, Doeo succeeds on a much more visceral level. In VWs, players, I argue, are innately unsettled by the unchanging "theme park" nature of the game. Some MMOs, such as Guild Wars and LOTRO have endeavored to give the player the experience of living through an instanced event that shows a fundamental change in the game world. I heartily endorse this trend - but look forward to the day when such changes are programmatic and player-driven en masse in addition to being a story-telling device.

Game Three: The Last Stand (by Con Artists)
Lesson: Fanatical attention to detail pays off.

The Last Stand is a fun little "fight off the zombie horde" game that succeeds in a strange direction. The gameplay is fun but lacking - the weapons need a balance pass, the zombies are varied but act in highly predictable ways, and most importantly, the bullet particles are a little buggy - causing you to shoot zombies across the screen when you were pointed diagonally at the head of a zombie munching on your barricade.

So why is this game such a winner? Well, zombies plus guns is an automatic win, but I think the subtle and fanatical attention to little details truly sets this game apart.

Most casual games have difficulty "lowering you into the pit" - introing a game, especially a casual one, is much harder than it looks. I liken the action to taking a picture frame and bringing it forward to your eyes - as the frame comes closer, your attention is naturally diverted from "far" to "near." Likewise with the outro of any game - you don't want to "game over" and kick the player out - you want to instead ease them quickly away from the picture frame, pulling away with a deliberate but steady pace to move the player's attention from "near" back to "far."

Last Stand, however, easily pulls you into the action, and sets a tone that never lets up in the entire game - everything about the interface between zombie waves and the resource management itself points back to the fiction of the game world. It's rare to see a player so eager to read a little post-it note between levels, but the messages therein show an almost movie-like descent from survivalism to hopelessness and back to grim resolve.

The survivors you collect are a resource to be used - they don't help too much in the zombie fight, but you can put them on the line to find more survivors, weapons, and repair your barricade. In the fight itself, they each look very distinct and act like they just stepped from a John Romero movie. I gave my survivors names, and actually chuckled when one would bite the dust in the process of recruiting their replacement.

The final feature of this game that truly highlights the attention to detail on the game world is the use of night/dawn/day as a level timer. In the heat of battle, I would watch for the lightening of the sky - just like I imagine my guy is doing while reloading the sawed-off shotgun. When the sun starts rising, I know it's mop up time, and I begin to relax, sharing that moment with my avatar in the bloody barricade.

Take home for creating virtual worlds: Players never beg for features like sunrise/sunset, or weather patterns, or in-game messaging that looks like it is scribbled on a post-it note, but each little piece of detail increases player immersion, and thus player retention.