Kloonigames

Here’s a quick look on what’s going on in the world of rapid game development.

First of all my friend Juuso, (the author of the excellent GameProducer.net) has published his first rapidly developed game: Highpiled. It’s a physics game where your object is to build a very high tower from a bunch of boxes. Juuso cranked the game in 21 hours, which is pretty amazing. I’m glad that he has decided to publish the game. And while we are on the topic of GameProducer.net I also recommend you check out Juuso’s post about How To Create Games Incredibly Fast.

As an interesting side note, the game’s setup has the following phrase in it:

Highpiled is “blogware” which means in this context that if you like the game, it would be nice if you could write a few lines about it in your blog and link to www.highpiled.com from there. This is optional, but I’d appreciate your effort.

This was the first time I’ve bumped into the term “blogware” (used in this context), but I have to say that I think it’s a great idea. Up to this point I have just used the term “freeware” for my games, but maybe from now on I should use the term “blogware” 🙂

Another friend of mine Martin (of Grapefrukt.com) has released a new (flash) game called Flashpiper. It’s an addictive pipe twisting puzzle game, with an online high score. I hope to see more games from him during the spring.

The mother of rapid game development ExperimentalGameplay.com has a new competition coming up. It’s due to start at 5th of February and is guaranteed to bring a horde of cool new games. Who knows maybe I’ll take a stab at the competition (if I come up with a decent idea for a game that fits the theme).

Another cool experiment was conducted by the good folks of the Finnish game forum SuomiPelit.com. They created a game (in a day) for every day of November. The result was 30 small innovative done-in-a-day games. The almost complete result of their work can be viewed here. Unfortunately it’s in Finnish, but luckily the combination of screen shots and download urls is a universal language that every gamer understands.

I’d also keep an eye out for these blogs: Bonsai, Skooma Games and the2bears.com. Because the authors of these blogs have promised us rapid game development and I intend to make sure that they keep their promise. Even if it means that I have to personally track down where they live and start harassing them until they give up and create some more games 🙂

There are few things I never seem to get over with. One of them is the Cacodemon’s score mechanism (previous post on the subject) and the other one is Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I started rewatching the season one again).

Actually this is more of a very dry game design theory post about how different score mechanisms affect games. Cacodemon just happens to be the practical example. So if you haven’t downloaded the game already, you can download it from here. And click here to download the examples for this post (a zip file that includes three test exes). Download them now, I’ll wait. While your downloading you can study the highly scientific chart of how the different game modes have different skill vs score rates.

Now we can begin the boring theory part of this post. We’ll begin by examining how the score mechanisms affect the game in general. I agree with Danc of Lost Garden that score mechanism are a meta game mechanics that’s layered on top of the core game mechanism. The core game mechanism stays unaltered but a scoring mechanism can adjust the balance of the game and enhance both the fun and intensity of the core mechanism. A score mechanism can also punish players when they play poorly, but punishing players can easily make the game too difficult and frustrating for the players.

In Cacodemon terms this means that what ever the scoring mechanism is, the player still can spin and bounce the kitties (the core mechanism). Even if there wouldn’t be any kind of scoring, you could still punish the kittens from the bottom of your heart. You just wouldn’t get any kind of score from it, but you could still do it.

The Original Simple-o-Scoring System
In the original release of Cacodemon (the cacodemon.exe) there is the simplest reward mechanism possible. You score by throwing the kitties to the wall or by spinning them. You also get some points if you throw the kitten into the oven. There is no punishment if you happen to drop a kitty. You have ten cute kittens to go and the game ends when you run out of kittens. The kitten count is reduced if you drop a kitten into the pit bellow but also if you throw them into the oven. Only difference is that you get some points if you throw the kitten into the oven.

Because both the oven and the pit reduce your kittens the optimal way to play the game is to just bounce and spin the kitten for maximal points avoiding both the oven and the pit.

The funniest thing to do in the game is to whack the heck out of the small cats and this scoring mechanism encourages player to do that. But the game lacks suspense, because the scoring mechanism doesn’t really punish the player for failing. You don’t get that “Damn, I almost had it” -feeling, that you get from a more intensive gaming experience. And I feel that that’s the biggest short coming of this otherwise good and beginner friendly version of the game.

The Punisher System
During the development of the game I already tested this scoring mechanism and decided to go with the player friendlier system. In this game mode (cacodemon_test1.exe) you also get points for plucking and banging of the kitties, but you can only cash in those points by throwing the kitten into the oven. If you fail to do that (the kitten slips and plummets into the pit), you get a zero score for that kitten.

This scoring mechanism is surely going to bring some intensity into the game. The game gives the player the change to risk it all for a greater score. Keep on bouncing the kitten and it’s possible that you don’t get any kind of score or play it safe and throw the kitten into the oven the first change you get. I think it’s a nice risk to give to the player, because in the end they can only blame their own greed for their failure.

The problem with this scoring mechanism is that in practice it’s frustrating at least for the new players. A series of games with a zero score is surely going to depress even the most enthusiastic player. Even for the player who has been playing it for a while, the game can be a bit too difficult. Especially if they don’t take the risk consciously.

The Score Multiplier System
So if my original version was newbie friendly and the second one was for the hardcore players, wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way of combining the best of both systems. I think I came up with one and I also realized that I wasn’t the only one to use this system.

In this mode (cacodemon_test3.exe) there is a score multiplier that increases every time you throw a kitten into the oven. And it resets back to one when you let a kitten slip to the pit.

This way there is also the risk from the second system, but the punishment isn’t so cruel. Usually the new players don’t even bother with the score multipliers. But for the more experienced player the multiplier system gives a nice boost of replayability. And it also makes the make more intensive to play.

At least I hope it makes the game a bit more intensive without making it too difficult for the new players. I thought of adding this mechanism to the next version of Cacodemon’s Barbecue Party in Hell. So let me know what you think of it.

Cacodemon’s Barbecue Party in Hell is on the verge of a new release! But before I release a new version of the game I’d really love to hear your comments about few gameplay tweaks that I have done. These tweaks where born from the great discussions on the Cacodemon’s Barbecue Party post. So big thanks to everybody who commented.

New players ahoy I need your opinions and feedback. If you haven’t played Cacodemon’s Barbecue Party I really need you to test out the game and tell me what you thought of it. I’d really appreciate it and you get to influence the gameplay of Cacodemon by your comments. If your a new player I want you to run the “cacodemon_test1.exe” or the “cacodemon_test2.exe ” first (the download and installation instructions are below). And after you’ve tested it please let me know if the game was too easy or too hard and any other suggestions and ideas that you came up with playing the game. You can test the original game by running the “cacodemon.exe” and let me know which one them was the best and why.

I’d also love to hear from the old savvy Cacodemon players, what you think of these new gameplay modes and which of the plays the best and why.

So here are the test builds and installation instructions.

1. First you have to download the Cacodemon’s Barbecue Party (5.2 Mb) (release 1).
2. Then download the Cacodemon_testpack.zip file (includes two .exes) and extract it into the same folder where the “cacodemon.exe” is located.
3. Then run either “cacodemon_test1.exe” or “cacodemon_test2.exe”.

The test #1 was actually released originally in the Cacodemon’s original blog post’s comments. It has the per kitten scoring enabled. Meaning that you only get a score if you manage to throw the kittens into the oven. This was enabled after the discussion that the oven was basically useless in the game.

The test #2 has the time released kittens mode coded into it. Now the kittens are also released after twenty seconds. So it’s possible to play around with multiple kittens at the same time. And you’ll get a double score for doing that.

In related news I have been working on the high-score list and it will be included in the new release of Cacodemon’s Barbecue Party in Hell and Pluto Strikes Back. The bad news is that when I’m not doing rapid game development, the engineer in me pops up and I end up over engineering my code. So the high-score list feature turned into a obsession of updating my game engine to handle it’s resources in a smarter way. I was a little afraid that something like that might happen. Good news is it is almost done, the bad news is that I’m really busy next week.

In the other news grapefrukt has just released his new cool game called Eater Of Worlds. You should check it out.

I’m in the middle of development, so just a quick note. I’ve uploaded all my games to Pjio.com, so they can now be played online. I hope that I can find some new players for my games, since from now on you don’t have to download and extract the zip files. Even though Pjio.com requires for you to install a plug-in I think it’s a bit easier for the not-so-tech-savvy players.

Here’s the links to my games on Pjio.com:
Pluto Strikes Back
Slimy Pete’s Singles Bar
Jimmy’s Lost His Marbles

In the Pjio.com related news, the founder of Pjio.com, Tim Fisher created a fun experimental game in 4 days called Part One. Check it out, it’s a fun take on the swarm shooter idea.

The feedback on Pluto Strikes Back has been surprisingly positive. So I thought I’d write a little bit about what’s up with Pluto.

There’s a new version of the game (Release 1.5). It fixes the “endless” score bug and makes the game a bit easier to gasp. It also makes a lot of the content modable. The new version can be download from here. Or if you only want a quick patch download this file and extract it on top of the older version of Pluto Strikes Back.

When you have downloaded the new version I recommend checking Pluto Strikes Back’s first mod by Felekar. You can download it from here (just extract it on top of Pluto Strikes Back). It changes the game by increasing the gravity of other planets. The end result is very fun and very different Solar System to play in.

Pluto Strikes Back can now also be played online. Thanks to pjio.com. So if you haven’t played the game already go to pjio.com and try it online for free. I’ll soon be uploading all my games to pjio.com (I’ll try to do that on Monday).

There’s also a gameplay video of Pluto Strikes Back on Youtube.com (Thanks to Seebee). So everyone who doesn’t want to download or play the game online can see what the game looks like in action.