Posted by Brice on July 26, 2010
Shadow of the Colossus is considered a landmark title that was developed by a highly disciplined and intelligent team. Released in 2005 for the Playstation 2, the critically acclaimed title featured incredibly expansive, vast worlds and even more vast enemies to scale and conquer. Set in a fictional world, the game follows the tale of a young warrior who is on a quest to slay all of the mystical massive creatures that exist in order to resurrect his fallen loved one. As the player goes to each location to slay each colossus, they become larger and more beautiful than the last. Between these epic battles are uneventful rides through breathtaking fields, mountains, and other terrain.
Shadow of the Colossus is useful as a smart game development model for several reasons. The cadence of the title is very different from most games; instead of a nice stroll or job through the excitement and action of the game, Shadow of the Colossus seems to be more like walk, sprint, walk, sprint, in the way that the player has massive “boss” fights bookended by serene horse rides. Why is that? Secondly, the game is one of the most beautiful ever developed for the Playstation 2. How does the world work together with the gameplay? And third, why is the game so limited in the abilities of the main character? Was that on purpose?
Let’s dive in to the practical development techniques that student and independent developers can learn from this title.
Learning from the Colossi: Focus
There is much to be learned from Shadow of the Colossus; the game speaks volumes about the development team that created it.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Brice on May 30, 2010
How can a game feel like it was made by the developers “out of love”? How can a game seem like the developers implemented everything that they thought would be fun and interesting, lacking nothing? How can a game feel like it went 110% to provide a top-notch experience?
There are many components to making a game. There are the Base Mechanics, the rules of how the game works. There are the Punishment and Reward Systems and Long Term Incentive, which fuel why the player plays and for how long. And there is the Aesthetic Layout, the artwork, sounds, and polish layered on top of the rest of the game that help to fill out its Core Experience.
We’ve discussed before how the gameplay, what they player is actually doing, is more often than not the most important aspect of a game’s design. But left alone, the Base Mechanics of a game are just mathematical constructs. Without aesthetics, the game feels stale to most non-engineers. These rules and gameplay blocks must be built. However, once that has been taken care of, how can a developer get their game to be perceived as the highest quality? What are the indicators of a good versus a great game?
This final, key 10% of the game is what is referred to in the industry as “polish”. It is the time in development when the game could in fact be considered “done”, but just a few more features, tweaks, and sparkles will help it to shine through to players and stand out from the crowd and breathe life into it. Well polished games are described with words such as “charming”, “engrossing”, “fascinating”. Well polished games are loved by their players. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Brice on January 21, 2010
Avatar recently became the second highest grossing film of all time, bested only by James Cameron’s previous blockbuster, Titanic. I was skeptical at first when I saw the trailer, but the box office numbers pushed me over the edge and finally got me in the theater seats, and I was certainly not disappointed.
A film this successful accomplishes so much; whether you are a western anti-mainstream individualist or not, you must appreciate how difficult it is to make a single film that can touch the hearts of so many millions of viewers around the world. The special effects and artistry put into the world were of course breathtaking and the story…well, we’ll get to that in a minute.
Avatar offers some great lessons to game designers who are looking to reach a broad audience through an magnificent work of art. While there is much to learn from Cameron’s masterpiece, there are two main aspects that struck me as particularly timely to today’s game development landscape. Indie developers are especially encouraged to read on.
[Note that this post is full of spoilers. Proceed at your own risk if you haven't seen the film.]
You Don’t Have to Always Be Original
When I was younger and more foolish, I used to think that in order to create something great, to design a great game, to tell a great story, it had to be original. It had to be made up of things that no one had done before, all my own ideas. If everyone else was making first person shooters, I would make a 2D puzzle-adventure mash up. If the industry was telling stories about love, I would tell a story about existentialism. Go against the grain, as they say. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Brice on January 4, 2010
In our final article detailing the Game Design Canvas, we talked about the Aesthetic Layout, the icing on the cake, the visuals and sounds and interaction methods that give games their artistic spark. Many games are revered for their gameplay, but not as many games nowadays are praised for fun Aesthetic Layouts.
However, this is still an area ripe for innovation. Playing with visuals, sound, or interaction in a way that hasn’t been done before is a highly underestimated way to add originality and memorable moments to games. Some of my all time favorite anecdotes from childhood game experiences come from these little Aesthetic surprises, that are built not from the Base Mechanics or the P&R Systems, but from the developer’s fun ideas about making it more than a game and bringing it into a real world experience.
To illustrate, I’d like to highlight three of my favorite Aesthetic surprises, all of which made me practically jump out of my seat and say, “Wow! This is so fun!” With an open mind centered around a game’s Core Experience, developers can easily create these kinds of moments in their own games. Thinking outside the box in this area also makes your game very noteworthy; it’s definitely the kind of moment that would be shared online or in person with fellow players.
Note that this post contains spoilers for all three of these titles. So if you’re ready, my three picks for the best jump-out-of-your-seat-moments:
Star Tropics’ Secret Letter
This one goes waaaaaaay back. In this tidy little action adventure title for the Nintendo Entertainment System, the player sailed and yo-yo’d all over the world in search of their lost uncle. The puzzles were simple, consisting mostly of Zelda-style button and switch challenges. The battle system was fun and the music was snappy; not a bad title in my book. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Brice on December 31, 2009
Who cares if the main character is wearing silver armor or an orange cloak? Does it really matter if your military troop is fighting in Europe or Asia? There can’t be any difference between a game about saving the world, and one your one true love, right?
It does matter. In fact it matters a great deal. The sights and sounds and feeling contribute to the Core Experience of a game like no other part of the game can. They are what make games a true art form instead of pure science, they are what make games closer to theater than arithmetic, painting than to geometry. These artistic strokes are the skin that the world will see view the game, its face, its exterior.
Welcome to the fifth and final component of the Game Design Canvas: the Aesthetic Layout.
The Bells and Whistles
Hardcore gamers, and even some game developers, often tend to think of games exclusively as mechanical systems. This is expected, because these types of people have typically played so many games that they’ve become experts. Trained to analyze and dissect, they see through the smoke and boil the game down from bells and whistles to gears and oil. All of the other systems we’ve talked about within the Game Design Canvas, the Base Mechanics, the Punishment and Reward Systems, and the Long Term Incentive, are all of these gears. And once they see under the hood, they manipulate the gears as much as possible to get what they want. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Brice on November 13, 2009
[In this guest post supplied by Chris Denyer, he discusses simple ways that anyone working on an indie title can make their game look prettier with some sleek pixel art techniques. His article originally appeared on The Daily Click.]
There is absolutely NO excuse to make an ugly game.
NONE whatsoever.
So often, we see examples of games that are just plain ugly. There’s so little attention to detail, it’s nauseating.
In art circles it’s a fairly established fact that ability isn’t a huge limiter. Obviously some people have more talent than others, but talent is simply a jumpstart. Like some people can do larger, harder sums in their head because math is their talent. For the rest of us mere mortals, we learn techniques that enable us to work out that same sum on paper.
At the end of the day, the answer is the same, just worked out using rules and logic as opposed to natural ability.
The principle with making a good-looking game is similar. Not everyone is going to make a game with glorious pixel art and smoothly framed animations. However, when you look at some of the games posted here, the authors simply have no idea.
This article’s purpose is to rectify that situation, and point out a few hints and techniques that should enable anyone to make a game that looks PRETTY! 
(wooyay) WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Brice on October 16, 2009
If you’ve played an independent game title, the kind made by one developer working part time with a dream, then chances are you’ve seen a game made using pixel art. For the uninitiated, pixel art is where the artwork and art assets in a game are drawn pixel by pixel, in the style of classic 8-bit or 16-bit video games. Of course all games use pixels in truth, but art pixel games tend to exaggerate the size of them and stick to a limited color palette. Spelunky is a recent indie game that uses this style:
Your gut reaction to these games is probably one of two things: WAIT! There is more to read… read on »