next »

[dongle]

First off, let me say that designing casual games is a lot more difficult than I expected it to be. Watching live, blind, player testing showed me two important things. One is that the average person doesn't like to experiment to figure out the rules of a game. The other is that things that seem obvious to developers or other people experienced with games are totally opaque to many people.

That said, I'm trying to revise my game PongVaders based on what I observed at PAX and some feedback from a game designer (who shall remain anonymous) who really knows what he's talking about.

In my game, there are two paddles arranged Pong-style and aliens in the center of the screen. The invaders fire shots that behave like the ball in a pong or breakout game. Shots from the invaders do not collide with invaders until it is reflected by a player's paddle. If a shot is volleyed between both paddles, it is supercharged and can pass through multiple invaders instead of exploding on contact.

Right now, invaders fire hollow white shots. When the shot is reflected by a paddle, the shot is filled in so it looks like a white square. The charged shots become red and draw a motion blur.

There are several problems with this: one is that hollow-white-red is not an obvious sequence. Also, it is not obvious to players that paddle contact is advancing the sequence. The other issue is that it is possible to reflect shots off of scene geometry back to the paddle. These shots are white, but do not become supercharged upon reflection. If the other player is attempting to volley shots to you, and you reflect a shot off of the scene geometry, both incoming shots will be white and it is not obvious which balls have been 'volleyed' and will be charged upon reflection.

What's a better sequence? What's a better way to communicate that paddle contact is advancing the sequence? How do I let players know which shots have already been hit by the other player?

( Screenshots and video here - excuse the self-promotion).

Thanks for any advice,
Jon

[Sorano]

Accessibility in games is hard. I definitely agree. Now I haven't played your game but I saw a video on Youtube. If I understand correctly, you want to communicate a particular sequence of actions that are beneficial to players and harmful to enemies, no?

Have you tested anything using color gradients? A normal projectile is hollow, then turns white upon reflection. Then each successive hit by players progressively changes the projectile's tint from white to red with each volley.

[dongle]

The game only requires both players to touch the ball for it to become supercharged, but the problem is that players aren't getting that paddle contact is causing the charging. I think there needs to be some way to signify /which/ player has hit a given ball, but I don't want to spill too much of what I've been working on because that could lead the answers that I'll receive.

[magnum_opus]

well what about:
-Player paddles are red and blue (for instance)
-Invaders launch a white shot
-Upon reflection it takes on the color of the paddle
-Upon second reflection it becomes purple (or whatever the appropriate additive color)

Edit: having poked around around, the game looks colorful enough that there might not be any good clear set of colors for the idea.

[dongle]

Oops, you're right, I should link some images of the game - fixed in the OP now. Yeah, we played around with additive coloration and that got noisy. We're thinking of maybe playing with the ball's geometry, but geometry isn't that good of a sequence and changing geometry might color how the player expects the ball to reflect.

[Super-Dot]

Have you tried putting in any sort of animation when the ball touches the paddle? Without playing the game or watching a proper gameplay video, I don't have any intuition as to where the problem might be, but it looks like players just might not be noticing that the balls change when they touch the paddle because it's such a subtle change.

Something like a brief glow, a swirly poweruppy effect, or a brief increase in size (like the ball is taking a breath or something), would do the trick if that's the problem.

As to letting the player know which paddle the ball has touched, it's impossible to give good advice on this without seeing the game in action. One idea would be to make the ball graphic asymmetrical somehow—fill in only the side of the ball that the paddle that hit it is on, or make it glow on that side.