Game Design case study: Taptap Kidnap PART – I (a.k.a how to tryhard)

~FOREWORD~

Hello all.

After a rather long silence on the blog I am back. I spent my time well, though, and produced another game, and released it on Playstore and Appstore .

Here, though, we will have a look at how I designed the game, and why I did so. As I said in my introduction post here, I am by no means an expert or professional in game design, but I aspire to be one and work hard towards that goal. I hope, by explaining my ideas and thought processes here, we would all get a change to discuss and learn what I did right and what I did wrong, together.

So without further ado, lets dive into this.

~WHY WOULD SOMEONE DECIDE TO ENTER A WORLD OF ENLDESS SUFFERING~

(a.k.a Why I DECIDED to Make a MOBILE Game as a Solo Developer)

Early this year I decided to make a game for mobile devices, because of two reasons. First, I needed to get warmer with Unity3d, and second, I needed to feel the satisfaction of delivering another finalized product. Since my first published game I had made something like… 10 prototypes, all working fine and ready to blossom into a game, but still frozen in the deep dark corridors of my hard-drives for various reasons. These uncloncluded attempts were bothering me, and I needed something to break this “developers’ block”.

Developer’s Block

Next step was to decide what kind of game to make. Now, I had already made a puzzle game with very original mechanics and published it on both Google Play and Appstore, however it did not get much hype and definately did not return any financial income. It was a nice experience but I quickly understood I had no means of advertising a puzzle game to make it reach enough people. So for this new game, I decided to try the opposite end of the spectrum; I decided to make an action-oriented game focusing on fast observation, quick thinking, and good reflexes.

Normally, once you know what kind of game you want to make, fun times begin. Before sleep, when on the bus, during the shower, when watching a movie… Every experience is an opportunity to find and enhance ideas, so this part is what I enjoy the most. Usually. But when trying to make a game for mobile devices, especially for phones, it’s another story for me.

Here I should say that I do not enjoy mobile games very much. Not because I categorize all of them as bad games or I see other gaming mediums superior, but because I just can’t cope with touch controls myself.

When you play a game on a mobile device for the first time, you feel some kind of thrill, because deep inside, it reminds you the days you played with your (or your friends’) handheld gaming devices, like the legendary Gameboy. But play some more, and you quickly sense the feeling fade, because…

I miss you, dear friend…

…phones do not have buttons dedicated for gaming. Below you will find why I think this is a serious problem that demands a clever approach.

~GETTING TO THE ROOT OF ALL THE PROBLEMS IN THE WORLD WITH HOPES TO FIX IT~

(a.k.a. Game DESIGN, Then and Now)

Lets take a step back and consider this. Most people like to play oldschool games, because while doing so, they remember their childhood, where they were enjoying the thrill of discovering new things. The experience old games presented is rooted deeply in many people including myself, belonging to times when we felt ourselves larger, and the world was not as boring and frightening at the same time.

But the moment you try to play, say, a tetris clone in a mobile device, you understand things have changed, and often for the worse; the world is no longer the same. And after long contemplations as to why, I believe I found the source of this problem. As you have guessed, I believe it to be touch controls.

Now, it would be foolish to say touch controls are not a good candidate for gaming, in fact, in the right medium they should be extremely good. A “touch” is definately more precise then a mouse click, positioning your finger should feel more natural then aiming with a mouse, and in theory, since you have five fingers per a hand, you should be able to to do more actions in less time. These would all be true… if the game is designed around it.

But you see, here at this exact spot lies is the problem. None of the old games were designed around it. Their rythm, pacing and difficulty, all were designed according to keyboard, mouse, or gamepad controls. You do not have any of these in a mobile phone. When you port, say, Dune 2 or Mortal Combat or Need for Speed into iPad as exactly they were before, it won’t be the same great experience to play them. In fact, it will most definately be worse.

Moreover, most of the games produced today are derivations of these old games. We still play platform games similar to Metroidvania in design, FPS’s are not much different from Wolfenstein, and racecar games still feel and play like Lotus. The core designs haven’t change too much. Sure, there are alot of lateral stuff on them, like an inventory management or a better story, or rpg character proggession… and all these extra stuff actually make the problem worse then it is. Because now, you need a way to access inventory or character or upgrade screens, and you have manage all those tiny details included within.

To amend this situation, you could create virtual buttons and place them somewhere on the screen. In theory, the player can use these buttons instead of physical ones and still enjoy the game as they normally would. But this brings us to another dimension of the problem. The screen of the phone is relatively small, and when you place buttons on this already small screen, you prompt your players to put a significant portion of their hands over the allready-small screen. And most of the time this means reduced observational input area for your players.

Imagine the possibilities…

Imagine playing a shoot-em up game with virtual buttons on screen. You would place them towards the bottom, where some enemies may come from. The hands of the player would prevent them from seeing them in time and cause a late reaction, reducing gameplay quality. This is a serious problem for many action games, which I was considering to make one of.

So I thought what to do about this, and I finally decided it was not the guilt of the touch controls, but of what we design our games around. With this understanding also came the enlightenment on why games like flappy bird or timberman or angry birds were huge successes. They had altered their gameplay to fit the medium. The games were much less complex, much less involving, and much shallow because of this change, but as a tradeoff, they kept the “fun” part alive.

None of these games are my cup of tea, though. I grew up playing X-COM Terror From the Deep on Superhuman difficulty. The times I feel the most satisfaction playing a game is when I have to fight against almost-impossible, overwhelming odds and barely win at the end. Which, casual gamers that make up %90 of the mobile market, would see as a torture.

Considering all of these, I decided to make a game that starts very easy and quickly gets harder. The end would be inevitable and come shortly, but how much score the player can harness in this period would decide the outcome.  This way, I could satisfy both the casuals and hardcore players alike. This was the first design decision I made about the game, before anything else.

But it lead to the flood of ideas and I was able to catch some of them, which I will describe in the next episode. Untill then, stay safe, and play games.

Part 2: Touch me in the right places