next »

[melos]

Are adding secrets to games a good or bad idea?

[Schoq]

it's very very good, but less good coupled with a % counter

[K3fka]

Of course secrets are great. They give your game more replay value, which is always great.

[ProgramGamer]

This should provide a much deeper explanation than we could ever come up with.

[s0]

great idea, but secrets need to be meaningful, ie they should be revelatory either in a gameplay/mechanics sense or in a narrative/atmosphere sense. best case it should change your view of the game in some way. it shouldn't be throwaway content that were you were planning to cut out instead of including it as a secret.

[Terrytheplatypus]

yeah, i loved the newgame+ secrety stuff with anodyne, though i didn't get too far into it. I think secrets work best when you build up some sort of narrative/mechanical logic, then subvert it with some secret things. this talk by nifflas about secrets is neat

[valrus]

yes, secrets are good.  and yes, anodyne's endgame is great; i really enjoyed that.

one of my favorite things is when you think you've done something the designers couldn't have anticipated, or broken the game, etc., and then there's a little sign of some sort, maybe some sort of little reward, that meant they knew you could do it.  then it's like you're in on a private joke with the designer.

[oahda]

Secrets make a game! Discovery is the best.

But if you announce the discovery with an ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED banner I will personally come to your house and destroy all copies of your codebase.

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

---------------------------------------------------------
|                Achievement Unlocked!                 |
|                  Prinsessa Wrath                         |
---------------------------------------------------------   

All your codebase has been deleted. and your house burned.                                                   
                 

[ThemsAllTook]

But if you announce the discovery with an ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED banner I will personally come to your house and destroy all copies of your codebase.

Not to derail this into a discussion of achievements, but could you elaborate? I'm curious whether the issue is making an explicit acknowledgement of the secret, or spoiling it/turning it into a thing to check off a list if a full list of achievements is viewable, or just achievements being gross in general, or something else.

[ProgramGamer]

I'd make an achievement for every secret, except they wouldn't spoil what the secret is and it would only be for bragging rights. (No gold or some such thing)

[Dacke]

I'm actually not a fan of secrets. They generally incentivize tedious play, rewarding the player for doing something boring and timeconsuming.

[ProgramGamer]

Yeah, but in that case, secrets just aren't for you. The thing is, secrets exist because people want to find them, not the other way around. You can still enjoy your games without finding every secret and the game won't yell at you. (at least not very loud.)

[Dacke]

If I play a game with secrets I will generally find some. The game rewards me for this and creates an incentive to keep searching. I'm not above such incentives and I tend to get intrigued enough to search for more during the game. But once I finish the game and look back on it, I often (but not always) find that the extra searching created a worse game experience than if I had ignored them. The game encouraged me to play in a boring way and didn't make me feel special for finding the stuff. I don't think it should be considered a no-brainer to add the promise of interesting stuff in exchange for boring gameplay.

[ProgramGamer]

Yeah, the thing is in some games, the gameplay required to access some secrets isn't engaging at all, and that's kind of the point, since when things are engaging they're generally part of the game itself. I guess the answer is closer to "Yes put secrets in your game, but if they're not very interesting, don't put too many."

[Dacke]

I think I generally prefer if the energy put into creating secrets is used to make the world itself more interesting/varied/detailed. Many metroidvanias (Eternal Daughter, Knytt, etc.) have a magical sense of exploration and discovery, while at the same time having engaging gameplay all along the way. You're rewarded for exploring the world in a fun way, rather than in a tedious one.

[s0]

Yeah, the thing is in some games, the gameplay required to access some secrets isn't engaging at all, and that's kind of the point, since when things are engaging they're generally part of the game itself. I guess the answer is closer to "Yes put secrets in your game, but if they're not very interesting, don't put too many."

how are secrets not part of the game? or part of the game world?

i don't understand this discussion at all. i like secrets and i like searching for em because thats how i normally play games anyway. if secrets can be found through careful observation that is "fun" to me.

[Dacke]

Maybe my choice of terminology is bad. I'm trying to differentiate between things you will see when exploring the world normally (interesting things in the world) versus hidden things that requires you to do something "different" to find.

My problem is that the "different" thing you have to do tends to be boring and repetitive. A common example is pushing yourself against every wall in a game, hoping to find hidden doors. It's a behavior encouraged by many games, but for me it's usually super-tedious and unrewarding. But I can't know that beforehand, so I always end up looking anyway.

[valrus]

I liked the ability, in Final Fantasy V, where thief characters could see hidden passages.  There's a period towards the beginning of the game (but not quite the beginning) where you'll naturally have this, but as the game goes on and you get better classes and abilities, there's an opportunity cost to it.  So you have three choices (rub yourself against everything, take up an ability slot, or ignore it entirely) rather than two.

But in general, yeah; secrets, being part of the game, aren't exempt from general principles like "If you reward tedious behavior, players will do tedious things."

[Schoq]

yeah I think the hardest design challenge is to have players not be dumb about it. not including % counters is a start, I dunno what else.