1000 Patrons! And Good Game Design from 2016

Thought I'd check those out too. I really liked those. Here are some low key ones. The first one is kind of dry but I agree with a lot of it re what makes something fun. The others are developers talking a little about games (some of their own as well) and design in general. Overall, it seems to fall in line with the recent Nintendo vid about concentrating on a core mechanic. Duskers was a cool concept that came out this year too. WIRED: Ian Bogost <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78rPt0RsosQ" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78rPt0RsosQ</a> day[9] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mvjmvtk1j4" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mvjmvtk1j4</a> MisfitAttic (duskers) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvJSzWT3Egg" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvJSzWT3Egg</a>

As a follow-up to my previous comment, I wanted to talk about Enter the Gungeon, but there's not one specific thing about it that jumps out at me as being particularly well-designed, it's that the whole thing is a very cohesive and elegantly designed whole. It feels very thoughtfully constructed, which is huge for a procedurally generated game, and it just feels great to play. I know you gave a nod to Steamworld Heist already, but seriously, I mean dang. I picked up the game earlier this week after hearing it recommended basically everywhere and I have to say that the hat collection mechanic is one of the most cleverly designed mechanics I've ever seen. It hits so many notes with such a simple concept like "if you shoot the hat off someone's head you can pick it up and add it to your collection" that I can't help but be wildly impressed. The way it rewards player skill really drives home the XCOM comparison for me, where the stun gun served basically the same purpose by granting you research discoveries and letting you collect alien weaponry from any foes you took alive. Especially on the higher difficulties, seeing an enemy with a new hat is a legitimate dilemma for me because taking the shot may expose my party to unnecessary or even fatal gunfire. For me, the crux of the game experience is when you pull off a complicated trick shot, and being able to shoot the hat off an enemy's head, ricochet the bullet off the wall behind them, and shoot them in the back of their exposed head is the kind of thing that has me fist-pumping on my couch. Also, congrats on hitting 1000 patrons! Your content is stylish and insightful and thought-provoking and I look forward to what's to come. :D

The unintuitive controls in OlliOlli were pretty cool. You have to master intricate motions with your fingers just like a skateboarder masters intricate motions with their feet. You can't just press A. I definitely would like to see a video on Overwatch. Maybe on the sound design or the map and character designs? It doesn't seem like the kind of game you usually play, though, so it might take a bit of research compared to a lot of the other games you talk about.

hmmmmm... This year I mostly played catchup on games from last year, haha. But! I did buy Severed, and they had one that wasn't like, the most innovative thing in the universe ever but I did think it was clever. The Experience system is a crafting type deal. You have to manually assign your upgrades by spending materials dropped by monsters. The trick is that the materials that the monsters drop are all body parts, and you have to sever the body parts from the monsters intentionally and individually. It's not a huge change, but the entire game really plugs in around this cue and it morphs the entire experience. To sever body parts, you have to first engage sever mode, which you basically do by not getting hit and by dealing enough damage without fucking up. So the need for precision is emphasized, bolstering the fighting mechanic, which is all about switching between frantic motions and precise ones at the drop of a hat. It also means your growth is determined by how well you do more than how many fights you get into, meaning brainless grinding is totally out of the question, so they throw out random encounters all together. Which means in every fight it's even more important to harvest the body parts, upping the weight of the scenario. The use of body parts specifically is cool too. It answers the question "why are monsters dropping this loot" in a satisfying way, and the game benefits from less arbitration (it's going for a moody atmosphere, you see). More than that, it adds to the cronenberg influenced soft-body horror themes which really build a lot of the game. The game is all about how the body is the self, and how upgrading your body is a corruption of the self, and it tells that story through body horror themes, communicated solely through visuals and gameplay. It takes the traditional mechanic of RPG upgrading and recontextualizes it to say something new and interesting. That's why they take so many opportunities to show you what the main character looks like with all her gear equipped, they want to visually communicate the corruption. What I think is strongest about this mechanic is that it's a relatively small twist to something familiar, but the designers were very thorough about seeing how even a small change necessitates changing basically every other mechanic to fit. The game is incredibly cohesive. And those changes that they made to fit this one leveling up system come together to make interesting gameplay and interesting atmosphere that support and enforce each other. Most elegant thing that happened in 2016? probably not. Pretty brilliant? I like to think so. If you haven't played severed yet you can breeze through it in about 8 hours. It's mostly worth scoping out.

Julian Sterling

Congrats! That's a crazy milestone. You're totally killing it. Hmm -- I'd love to hear your thoughts on emergent gameplay. Like, how does Dwarf Fortress generate so many insane situations? That might be a fun one. I think you covered this a bit in your "stories from systems" ep, but could a game emergently produce a compelling narrative? Why aren't there more games like The Sims? What's Ken Levine been up to? Do you like links? Here are some of my favorite links. Might be inspiring! - why are almost all MMOs basically the same? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvK8fua6O64" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvK8fua6O64</a> - Ludonarrative Dissonance [pensive cigar puff] <a href="http://hitboxteam.com/designing-game-narrative" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://hitboxteam.com/designing-game-narrative</a> - are there emotions games can tap into that other media can't? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyhrKPLDCyY" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyhrKPLDCyY</a> Ok, ok, one more thing: Quadrilateral Cowboy, right? Right?! I think it's the first game to make me feel like I was really planning and executing a heist. GTA and Payday never quite get there for me. Curious if you have any insight about why that might be. I think it might have to do with the much heavier simulation aspect -- also, the whole command line thing is so weirdly obtuse, you really feel like an expert by the end.

Here is one that i've been thinking about recently. In battlefield 1's opening scene when you die it displays the name of the soldier you were playing as, when they were born and when they died. I think this gives a lot of depth to what you are doing, not just shooting AI and playing a game but also exploring history inside a simulation, the death feels real and impactful, what it actually could have been like to fight in WW1.

Ossian Olausson

Congratulations Mark :DD

Lixian

Congratulations man! I would love to see some design tips from Overwatch or a more in depth look at the return to oldschool solutions in modern games. Keep up the good work!

Jakub Pander

Congratulations, Mark! Overwatch - so full of fantastic game design bits, as mentioned in previous comments. I want to throw the character Ana in the ring. The design of this sniping healer just fascinates me. Almost all her abilities are dependant on who you hit, creating a crazy ton of dynamics with just the few abilities.

Furi health system. How you make the player fail 3 to 18 times but kill him only once. A clever idea to let the player learn the patterns without breaking too many times the narrative and the player motivation.

Sandro Dall'Aglio

The Witness: The starting panels in each area can always be used and are never turned off. That is done on purpose so a player can test their new hypothesis about the rules. Also, the power ups are knowledge about the rules that you aquire yourself and fit perfectly with the central themes of the game. World of Final Fantasy: The stacking mechanic in the game changes the dynamic of the fighting system and gives each monster more uses than simply summoning them like in Pokemon. Superhot: The entire time/movement mechanic Furi: The health system is a perfect fit for the long boss fights.

SpeckObst

Congratulations Mark! Keep up the good work 👌

Vladimirs Nordholm

Congratulations on the 1K! Not sure if this one qualifies since the original came out right at the end of 2015 but has also come to new platforms in 2016: Steamworld Heist. In particular, the little laser sighting lines on some of the guns -- which allow you to pull off amazing and ridiculous ricochet shots, but which never quite stay still, so there is still an element of skill and timing in pulling off the perfect shot. When you get it right, the feeling of satisfaction in doing so is marvellous -- but even when you get it wrong, it can have surprising results.

Richard

I do want to mention Doom but for something I haven't heard much. To me Doom was a bit more like a 3D Contra Alien Wars/ Probotector Alien Rebels. I feel this way for more than one reason but the one I want to point out is the chainsaw / BFG. To me they were equivalents of Contra's Helio Bomb. A limited use item that got you out of bad situations, generally when you made a mistake. This was a mechanic often used in Shoot'em Ups, Run n Guns, and Beat'em Ups: limited use get-out-of-jail cards. It was a really cool Mechanic that I'd never seen in an FPS and it worked perfectly. It kept the pace high like in all those other genres. When you had BFG and chainsaw ammo you could play slightly more risky because you could fall back on them if you got in over your head.

ThunderRazor

One more thing and then I'll shut up. Overwatch has two different voice lines for every ultimate - one for allies, and one for enemies. So if you hear McCree say "Step right up!" you know your teammate has unleashed his ultimate, but if you hear "It's high noon", you know to duck for cover. Also, other heroes automatically call out "behind you" or "enemy sniper!" when appropriate. The voice work provides amazing clarity to fights that might otherwise be confusing.

Ben Visness

From a more technical perspective, I think the most spoiler-free thing I liked about The Witness is that all of its puzzle rules are orthogonal to each other, so they can all be combined without conflict. I was floored by the way some late-game puzzles combined puzzle mechanics. (The door in the shipwreck!!!) But of course, the best bit of game design in The Witness was simply how the environmental puzzles were hidden in plain sight from the very beginning. (But don't spoil that for all your viewers!)

Ben Visness

Overcooked has some brilliant multiplayer design. They did an excellent job stripping out unnecessary complexity in the mechanics - what makes the game challenging is the amazingly creative and chaotic scenarios they put you in. Three-starring difficult levels with three of my friends was easily one of my most rewarding game experiences this year.

Ben Visness

In the new Hitman, the elusive targets in the "live" system, where you have one try to kill someone new on a map you HAVE to know from heart, because if you don't, you are gonna make a ridiculous kill. Or failed. It's the quintessence of being agent 47 and of the all system. It's the only time I was thinking "that system DESERVES to be online to prevent fraud or hacking re-try" in a non-multiplayer game. It's like if From Software would make a new temporary boss in Dark Souls 3 where you have only one try (okay, it doesn't make sens in the philosophy of dark souls, but for Hitman it's soo good). I'm not a fan of the escalade thing being only online though. Also, the way it manage timeline. You have to trigger some event to have access to some opportunity, but you can trigger them in the way you want and still leave your life. That's a pretty good way to create variation of a story that only the diorama design can make seem alive. I also loved the relation with the AI in Event[0]. At one point the AI just closed a door while I was in space and ask me a proof I'm not a stranger to come back. So I had to fine some detail of my previous conversation with the AI and engage with it. It ask me a specific name I was not remembering, so I say "I don't remember names ! Open please !" so it ask another question I was able to respond and it let me enter. A lot of conversation seem real because of the way the AI dialogue was melted with situations.

This. I was nearly done with the game, or so I thought, when I discovered the environmental puzzles from the top of the mountain. My jaw was on the floor for nearly an hour as I retraced every crevice of the island looking at the whole environment in that new light. It's the best epiphany moment I've had in a game in a long time!

Superhot and The Witness would be great to look at for this that they share in common: Unflinching adherence to the rules and development of a single core mechanic. For Superhot, time only moves when you do. For The Witness, the underlying rule that lines cannot overlap and always go from a starting bubble to an end cap. What you end up with are pure "system" games, where the consequences of a core mechanic are fully explored.

Much can be said about Superhot's clever main idea, about katanonly mode (so much fun) and etc, but aside from that, something that caught my attention was how well designed the levels are, specially how they play with our instincts. Just look at the train level for example; when you spawn, you face an enemy right in front of you, your first instinct is to shoot him, since that's what you've been doing, but if you do so, you'll probably end up squished by the tunnel that the moving train you're in top of is approaching. So after you die the first time, you realize the enemy is just a distraction, that you don't need to pay attention to him, since he'll be smashed in an instant. It makes you think before you play each level, since the "rules" you just learned might not be true anymore. That made the game feeling fresh all trough the end to me.

Maene Erinys

Witness's 'plot twist' with the environmental puzzles is my standout game-design-fuelled moment of the year. I've not seen anything that so totally recontextualises what came before.

Ian

It's funny that you ask which bits of good design stand out to us this year after so many notable disappointments hit the market. PokemonGO is at the top of my list. The game enjoyed an unprecedented surge of popularity and then basically fizzled out because players lacked half of the core Pokemon experience because you couldn't battle other players. Niantic said early on that they wanted PoGO to be a game of exploration, but then they removed the footprint system in the game, so players were left trying to triangulate the positions of Pokemon that they weren't seeing due to a bug that made timed-out spawns remain in a player's tracker as "ghosts". I actually think the best pieces of design in the game so far are the the buddy system and the appraisal feature. When you start playing PoGO, you pick a starter and then if you don't live near an area where they spawn, it just sits there because there was no direct way to level a Pokemon. For some bizarre reason, they took the Pokemon Rumble route where each Pokemon only has two moves and you're encouraged to throw the old ones away rather than keeping them to level them up. You *could* level up a Pokemon but not through battle, only through this esoteric candy system. Then when the level cap was discovered, the Level 20 XP bottleneck became apparent. There was no point in keeping a Pokemon and trying to level it up if you could just catch better ones later once you leveled up. The appraisal system changed the game. Once people figured out that there were hidden stats for each Pokemon, they found out that hatched Pokemon were more likely to have higher hidden stats. There were really iffy ways to calculate what their stats might be, but the appraisal feature laid a lot of that bare and cleared up a lot of ambiguity. It added immediate value to every Pokemon you picked up because the player finally had insight into significant data that affects their gameplay experience. The buddy system then fed into that loop by allowing players a way to gain candies for their rare and prized hatchling Pokemon. The original loop was Walk around &gt; Spin Pokestops for Pokeballs &gt; Catch Pokemon &gt; Release the weaker to evolve and level the stronger &gt; Take over gyms &gt; Repeat. The new loop put emphasis on eggs instead of Pokeballs. You didn't need to catch more Pokemon anymore to level up, you could just walk around. And then suddenly, people didn't need to have their phone in their hand nonstop, lest they miss out on more candy for their Charmander or Dratini or Magikarp with near-perfect stats. Rather, the high requirements to earn candy via the buddy system encourage the player to keep walking, which in turn hatches eggs, and there's your new positive feedback loop, and it's the one that Niantic really wanted to be there in the first place. I've also got some ranting to do about Enter the Gungeon, but I'll have to write that up later. :P

A look at Overwatch's successes in the age of the grey, gritty, samey shooter. Overwatch &amp; Splatoon are diamonds in the rough, love them both and I'm sure you'll find plenty to talk about. Thanks for listening!

I really liked the way Darkest Dungeons used the positions with respect to both attacker and defender with the skills and how the player had to manage it. Some skills are only usable from a certain position and only affect enemies (or friendlies) in a certain spot. It made for a lot of interesting team parties. A lot of things worked really well in that game. You could pick anything in that game, really. The torch level, the limited inventory space. The three different mission lengths and camping. The quirks (positive and negative) and the locking in of such. The different upgrade buildings. The different dungeons and curios. So much goodness. Oh, and who could forget the narrator? I know, that last one isn't game design :)

There are multiple good design choices in Hyper Light Drifter I would nominate. For example, secret areas are usually notated with a small symbol on the ground. The game never tells you this, thus requiring you to notice this on your own, but once you recognize the symbol, finding secrets becomes less tedious as you don't really need to hug every wall or pixel hunt. There's also the "use your sword to recharge your gun" mechanic, which creates an ebb and flow in combat as you alternate between picking foes off from a distance and moving into melee range.

Todd Brown

Many games create beautiful 3D worlds to walk through, but the Witness gives players a reason to pore over every detail of what they're looking at and examine their surroundings from every angle.

Dave Hoffman

I'm not sure if this counts in the sense of "here's one thing I can identify and talk about for a minute", but there are several design decisions in CIV 6 that move the series away from a one-resource playstyle. In 5 (and before, though I'm less familliar with those games) science was king, as it unlocked absolutely everything, so other things, like gold or production would kind of follow as a second-order effect. But in 6 there's a few things which prevent, the main being the splitting of advancements into both the tech tree and the civics tree. (To a lesser extent, the trees are also less interconnected - you can put off researching something for longer, in general.) There's also the eureka moments, which encourage you to do things you're already doing, and the fact that not every city can have every district, which means not all cities can produce all buildings, and may not be particularly effective producing military units. This has had a pretty profound impact on how I play, compared to 5. I will note, that the AI is pretty rubbish at this point, but I think that's less changing mechanics and more changing some numbers around.

The usage of color on Inside's puzzles also comes to mind when thinking on systems - it was really well done, giving the player a guide without any sort of HUD while also maintaining the theme of 'looking for a light in a gloomy, lonely world'. It also harkens back to the video you did on the color signposting in Uncharted 4.

Amit Netanel