Comments on: Epic Game Design: How the Incomparable Final Fantasy is Built

By: Making Mind Blowing Puzzles in Your Game | The Game Prodigy

Making Mind Blowing Puzzles in Your Game | The Game Prodigy — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:03:28 +0000

[...] Fantasy VI, originally for the Super Nintendo, is a game that we’ve covered before here on The Game Prodigy. The game makes good use of gameplay clusters throughout the adventure, and [...]

By: Cos

Cos — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 17:13:41 +0000

Great article, really inspiring. Comparing the ideas put forward here with your article on why SMB was so popular has made me feel better about programming rubbish game mechanics, but having good story/level development ideas.

From a layman like myself, many thanks, your analysis of a working model of gameplay clusters has been very enlightening.

When i consider the amount of hours i played the “dizzy” games (the ultimate cartoon adventure, codemasters) as a kid, it was never about the mechanics. Sure we need a solid set of mechanics, but it dose not need to be chess if you are more story/exploration driven.

Many thanks.

By: Brice

Brice — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 06:18:35 +0000

@Phil, great point, admittedly, Cutscenes would be a pretty boring game. :-) If you did want to struggle to surface a Punishment and Reward System, all you would find is that the player is encouraged to continue pressing the button, otherwise the game doesn’t move forward. You could also make an argument for paying attention to cutscenes, which punish you by not knowing what’s going on if you skip them.

Thanks for the comment!

By: Phil

Phil — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 11:09:39 +0000

Really nice article Bryce! I think the cluster system extends the Canvas very well!
You stated though that every cluster could be a game on its own with all parts of the Canvas. But i don’t really see a P&R System in the Cutscene-Cluster.