Archive for the ‘Game Design’ Category
We’ve spent a long time refining the gameplay in Velocity. All levels were built over a period of three months from December 2011 to February 2012, after over a year of tuning the controls.
As a result, Velocity is easy to pick up and have fun with immediately, and it also supports an incredible level of skill if a player wants to learn to master the game, as you can see below:
A few months back we asked our loyal Twitter Followers, Facebook Likies and PSPminis.com Readers to name the alien race in our new game, Velocity.
Now that the game has been announced on PS Blog, we can reveal our selections!
The Zetachron, a formidable alien race from the far side of the Toron Nebula
As you can see above, the winning suggestion was the first to arrive, courtesy of Mat Redvers, who will receive a free code for Velocity on release! Congrats Mat!
Which leaves three runner-up prizes, with a free copy of the game as well:
Insidians - from Ofaliss @PSPminis.com
Vianubis – from sniper721 @PSPminis.com
MechaMoths – from Simplebob here in the comments
Congratulations folks, please get in touch with us via the contact page to confirm your email address and identity.
Hope you enjoy Velocity as much as we have!
Also, if you haven’t done so already, go and bag yourself the image above, as well as some more cool Velocity Wallpapers courtesy of Push Square.
In our upcoming game Velocity, you are rewarded for three different play styles – Speed, Destruction and Survivors Rescued. Each aspect awards an XP value, which allows you to progress in the game.
Levels are therefore designed to challenge you in all three aspects, and can be played a number of ways to earn XP.
For example, someone who is good at shooting enemies can progress into the game without having to rescue many survivors or do it particularly quickly, but at some point they’re going to come across a level that is locked, and they will need to revisit earlier levels to balance their performance across the other aspects to unlock further levels.
Earn Perfect Triple-Stripe Gold Medals by being... Perfect.
Speed and Survivors are the two critical aspects of a level that you can fail a mission on, so the medals reflect how well you performed on those critical aspects: Bronze, Silver or Gold for Speed, and One, Two or Three stripes for number of Survivors rescued.
So, you can earn a Single-Stripe Bronze Medal if you suck, and a Triple-Stripe Gold Medal if you rock.
The Perfect Triple-Stripe Gold Medal is awarded when you have mastered all three aspects in the level; you can collect every survivor, you can take down all the hostiles, and you can do it bloody quickly – all in one attempt.
When you’ve reached this level of excellence, you clearly rule at that level, and deserve such a pretty medal for your efforts 
"I totally rule, that perfect medal is mine!"
FuturLab (Marsden & Rigden, 2012) recently conducted a focus test to determine the reductive effects of highly addictive ‘Teleport Activity’ on test subjects’ other addictions, such as Smoking (Nicotine), Tea/Coffee (Caffeine) and Jaffa Cakes (Chocolate-Orange Sponginess).
It was found that 100% of test subjects either forgot about their existing addictions, or ignored them entirely in order to continue engagement with ‘Teleport Activity’ – for up to four hours at a time.
An infographic illustrates the findings:
Heavy engagement with 'Teleport Activity'
It remains to be seen whether the results of this study can be extrapolated to the wider population, but we’ve got our fingers crossed…
When Dust 514 was announced a couple of years ago, it was something I’d been looking forward to in games for a very long time. Having just finished reading a great article in Develop magazine [Issue 122] about Dust 514 and its place on PS3, I looked online to watch some videos and read details on CCP’s website. I found this:
“Long term, we aim to become the premier service provider of the complete science fiction experience, one in which the experience itself extends from the ground all the way up into space, and on every vehicle in between.”
Today marks the first time I’ve ever been envious of young kiddies, because they will get to spend days at a time playing Dust 514 with their friends playing EVE, and I won’t :’(
The iOS version of Coconut Dodge contains two mazes in Maze Master mode that are not included in the PSP version, Mazes 6 and 13.
These mazes require Clawrence to keep a ball bounced centrally on screen whilst zipping left and right to collect treasure.
The trick is to keep the ball as central as possible before the mazes appear. If you need to correct the ball bounce, do it by tiny amounts either side to avoid sending it hurtling off screen. A good way to practice is to try and guess where the ball will land, and position Clawrence so the first bounce sends the ball straight up in the air.
You’ll need to be able to do this every time so that you can zip in and out of the gaps and return to where you need to be to keep the ball central, so practice this in the main mode as there are more balls around.
Hope that helps, happy dodging!
The Sixth Axis kindly published an article that explains some of the underlying design techniques that make Coconut Dodge fun!
The Art of Coconuts
Check it out: The Art of Coconuts.
Orbital, Flashback, Back To The Future, Thunderbirds 2086, Predator, Aliens and Turrican 2.
These have all in some way influenced the design of our new game, and to explain how, here’s a breakdown:
This was easily my favourite cartoon on TV when I was a kid. I can’t remember a single plot line now, but I couldn’t get enough of the futuristic intro sequence with the animated vehicle schematics. When we got our artist drawing up the pilot, ship and schematics for the teaser puzzle, this intro video was the main point of reference.
Name Our Game
It’s a 2D, top-down, vertically scrolling shoot ‘em up, with some cool new twists!
You can teleport!
We’ve designed the gameplay around the teleport mechanic, so there are physical dexterity challenges where you teleport around the screen, and action based logic puzzles, which require teleporting around the level. The world is constantly scrolling, and most levels require multiple passes using the teleport for 100% completion. As with Coconut Dodge however, we’re designing it so that casual players can still progress through the game having fun without going for the 100% awesomes.
No. Many people thought Coconut Dodge looked too difficult to play when we first showed gameplay footage, but as with many great games, it takes no time to learn, and takes a long time to master. We’re using the same approach on this game. It will be accessible for people new to the genre, for example people who don’t get on well with shooters, but who really loved Coconut Dodge and want to play our next game, and it will also give hardened bullet-hell lovers something new to master.
We don’t have a name for it yet, so we’re inviting people to suggest names for the game and the lead character, with a chance to win a free copy when the game is released! Check it out here: Name Our Game Competition.
