Making tradeoffs during game development

Games
#1

Have you made any major tradeoffs during the development of your game that fundamentally changed the gameplay?

As the lone developer working on Puzzlewood Quests, I had to make several tradeoffs. My original concept was to have a large open world, in the style of A Link to the Past, except there would be random enemy encounters, ala Pokemon. You’d walk around in the woods and boom, there would be an enemy, and then you’d move into the brain training fight mode, which is the real meat-and-potatoes of the game.

But… building an entire top-down 2D world and making it compelling to explore every nook and cranny is a big task, when you’re also building multiple mini-games, and there’s just one guy doing everything. So the overworld was the first to go, being replaced with the simple linear progression the game has now. I also flirted with the idea of doing it like the old BBS game, Legend of the Red Dragon, where the Inn is the hub, and you can travel into the woods whenever you like by simply pressing a button, causing a random enemy encounter or event to happen. That may have been fun too, but I felt it was difficult to tell a story that way and difficult for a casual player to understand whether they’re making progress or not. (I’d still like to try it, though, because I loved LORD back in the day.)

If I had gone with the top down overworld approach, it would have been a fundamentally different game, as there would have been more emphasis on exploring the land, and probably some zelda/metroidvania style finding of items that allow you to access other areas. I don’t know if it would have been better or worse that way as there are already a lot of games like that. The only difference mine would have had is the brain-training games at the heart of the battle system. It would be fun to try, though, and I hope I can do it in a sequel one day.

I also wanted to add multiplayer, and I had it partially working, but my implementation felt very awkward, so I dropped that as well. I may revisit multiplayer in the near future, though.

So what tradeoffs or compromises have you made in your game that drastically changed the design from what you originally envisioned?

Dave

#2

I think every single project of mine has been full of trade-offs, but for a new game I’m working on I’m trying a different approach.

I have my list of everything I want to put in, and I split it up into individual games, as in, version 1, then the sequel, then part 3 etc, adding in more into each game as it goes.

I’m hoping this means the first game will be fun, simple and easy to finish with no (relatively few) bugs, then I put more fun stuff into the sequel etc, building up a sort of franchise. I think this approach means I don’t so much drop features as get to them ‘eventually’, but in the meantime actually will release stuff. Here’s an incomplete example:

Racing game progressing:

V1 Basic racey game.

V2 +Multiplayer, jumps.

V3 +Weapons, track designer, AI opponents (as opposed to traffic).

In your case, why not have the overworld in your next game? You don’t even have to make the full thing, you could do a test of just mapping the town and stuff rather than the whole world. See how the players take to it (or not) and expand upon it for your world-conquering third installment, because realistically it isn’t hard to do the tile-based stuff, but as you say, designing and populating an entire overworld is simply time consuming.

#3

It’s probably a good idea to do things that way, if you can, and if it makes sense.  My only gripe with that approach is that, when done poorly, the app store becomes overrun with games that are really just concepts and don’t feel complete.

You are right, though, I could put an overworld map in the next game, and I just might!

Dave

#4

Hi Dave,

I’m only just starting out (with Corona and app development, at least - I’ve done other programming before) and am forcing myself to start on smaller projects, but even there one finds small trade-offs. The sort of things I’m adjusting aren’t major, though, and I find myself falling into a pattern similar to what rakoonic described; I keep a list of changes/improvements to make, but split them up into ones to complete before release, and ones to incorporate into a future update. Nothing I’m planning yet would warrant a ‘sequel app’, though.

That said, there are plenty of ambitious projects on my list (after a few more simple ones), and I’m intrigued now as to what sort of changes I’ll have to make when I get to some of those…

You mentioned dropping multiplayer; did that make any changes to the single player game, or was it separate enough that you could include it in a future update, rather than a ‘sequel’?

Cheers,

Simon

#5

For me, I’d already done a few simple apps, so this was the one where I wanted to prove I could make something that felt like an honest-to-goodness game with some meat to it, and a story, albeit a simple one.

As far as multiplayer, I never got it to feel right. At the time when I was trying it (~2012), Words with Friends and Draw Something were mega-popular, and I thought the “taking turns” approach would be good.  But it’s not good for Puzzlewood Quests. :wink:  I tried multiple variations of it, but I haven’t hit upon anything that was very fun yet. I think the ideal way to do it would be to have both players fighting each other simultaneously, and whoever solves the puzzle first attacks the other. Real-time multiplayer is always hard, though.

Dave

#6

I take an approach much like how both Rakoonic and Dixon describe. I use OneNote with cloud synchronization to track and prioritize both my general game ideas as well as my planned features for the game I am working on. My ideas can come at anytime so being able to enter and update ideas via my phone and then see them later on my laptop is very helpful. Anyway, for future, would-love-to-make, games I just record the ideas as they come. For my works in progress, I use a prioritized check list. The bug fixes and small features always bubble to the top and the larger more complicated features sink to the bottom. Over time, I create an imaginary or real line line between the must-have, nice-to-have, and possibly-not-worth-it features. I launch the game once all the must-have features are completed. Post launch I begin work on the nice-to-haves, fixes for newly discovered bugs, and performance optimizations. Depending on my time and interest and the success or lack thereof of the game, I might tackle a handful of the possibly-not-worth-it features. Years ago, I worked on a desktop application where I iterated over a list like this for many years and released 4 major versions of the application. I completed nearly every idea I came up with. I had a lot more time back then and such an approach is simply not do-able now. And frankly it’s not worth it unless you’ve already attracted 100s of thousands of users/players within the first couple months of launch. All this to say that at some point we all have to let go of even the best ideas.

If I were the one that developed Puzzlewood Quests or a game like it and I was truly passionate about it and believed it should be successful, I would stop development on the current version except for bug fixes and would immediately begin work on it’s sequel. I would focus on the really cool features I had to compromise on in the first version and add or remove things based on player feedback for the first version. I would also re-work the graphics without completely abandoning them. Just my two cents.

#7

I do something similar with ideas as they come up, except I keep a Trello board. One of my lists is “High Priority”, which is usually bug fixes and the like. Another list is “Vague Ideas” where I store the things that I would like to do one day.  I’ve got tons of ideas and ways to improve the game as well as things to put into a sequel, but I’m interested in how developers may have changed the fundamental gameplay of their games due to some tradeoffs, and whether it turned out good or bad. Sometimes good things happen when you’re restricted.

It’s like with writing… I was reading an introduction to one of Neil Gaiman’s books, and he was saying that none of the writers he knows ever send in anything when the editor says, “Just write about whatever you want.”  But if an editor restricts them in some way, like, “Write a story for this cthulhu compilation,” then it becomes a much more interesting prospect.

And I totally agree about time – time is always a problem for me too these days. If Puzzlewood was my full-time job, then yeah, I’d be working on a sequel and probably creating some spin-offs using the same underlying engine: “Spanish Quest”, “Web Developer Quest”, etc.  But it’s far easier to just add new stuff into the existing game. I think at some point I will finally achieve some fame on slashdot with a headline like, “Developer works on same mobile game for 20 years.”  :-)

Dave

#8

I know that I went off on a bit of a tangent on my last post. To answer your original question though, the answer is both yes and no. In the desktop application I did years ago, the first couple of major versions were severely lacking in regards to what I wanted them to have. Specifically, it was an image browsing product but it lacked image thumbnails. It only let you view one image at a time. In version 2, I added simple thumbnails and in version 3 or 4 I implemented thumbnails the way I really wanted. I also implemented a ton of nice-to-have features and finally stopped development at version 4.8.7. So this is the “yes” answer. Since then though, I have done a much better job of setting expectations for myself. The first game I developed plus the one I am working on now are or will be very close to what I have envisioned for them. This isn’t because I am a marvelous developer but, on the contrary, because I have set my expectations very low! :wink: I am working my way up to building a medium-scale platformer but know I can’t do that yet and get all the features I want. If I did, I’d probably end up have to make tons of sacrifices. So, for now for me, I am just doing simple puzzle and single click type games.

I think you have a great idea with Puzzlewood Quest. Seriously, I would consider making a Puzzlewood Quest 2 and adding lots of the things you had to sacrifice in the first one while also pulling in what you did in the first. There are plenty of games in the app store with sequels that build on each other. One non-mobile game series that comes to mind is Mega Man. They are all basically the same game but there are about a dozen of them, each (for the most part) better than the previous.

#9

I think every single project of mine has been full of trade-offs, but for a new game I’m working on I’m trying a different approach.

I have my list of everything I want to put in, and I split it up into individual games, as in, version 1, then the sequel, then part 3 etc, adding in more into each game as it goes.

I’m hoping this means the first game will be fun, simple and easy to finish with no (relatively few) bugs, then I put more fun stuff into the sequel etc, building up a sort of franchise. I think this approach means I don’t so much drop features as get to them ‘eventually’, but in the meantime actually will release stuff. Here’s an incomplete example:

Racing game progressing:

V1 Basic racey game.

V2 +Multiplayer, jumps.

V3 +Weapons, track designer, AI opponents (as opposed to traffic).

In your case, why not have the overworld in your next game? You don’t even have to make the full thing, you could do a test of just mapping the town and stuff rather than the whole world. See how the players take to it (or not) and expand upon it for your world-conquering third installment, because realistically it isn’t hard to do the tile-based stuff, but as you say, designing and populating an entire overworld is simply time consuming.

#10

It’s probably a good idea to do things that way, if you can, and if it makes sense.  My only gripe with that approach is that, when done poorly, the app store becomes overrun with games that are really just concepts and don’t feel complete.

You are right, though, I could put an overworld map in the next game, and I just might!

Dave

#11

Hi Dave,

I’m only just starting out (with Corona and app development, at least - I’ve done other programming before) and am forcing myself to start on smaller projects, but even there one finds small trade-offs. The sort of things I’m adjusting aren’t major, though, and I find myself falling into a pattern similar to what rakoonic described; I keep a list of changes/improvements to make, but split them up into ones to complete before release, and ones to incorporate into a future update. Nothing I’m planning yet would warrant a ‘sequel app’, though.

That said, there are plenty of ambitious projects on my list (after a few more simple ones), and I’m intrigued now as to what sort of changes I’ll have to make when I get to some of those…

You mentioned dropping multiplayer; did that make any changes to the single player game, or was it separate enough that you could include it in a future update, rather than a ‘sequel’?

Cheers,

Simon

#12

For me, I’d already done a few simple apps, so this was the one where I wanted to prove I could make something that felt like an honest-to-goodness game with some meat to it, and a story, albeit a simple one.

As far as multiplayer, I never got it to feel right. At the time when I was trying it (~2012), Words with Friends and Draw Something were mega-popular, and I thought the “taking turns” approach would be good.  But it’s not good for Puzzlewood Quests. :wink:  I tried multiple variations of it, but I haven’t hit upon anything that was very fun yet. I think the ideal way to do it would be to have both players fighting each other simultaneously, and whoever solves the puzzle first attacks the other. Real-time multiplayer is always hard, though.

Dave

#13

I take an approach much like how both Rakoonic and Dixon describe. I use OneNote with cloud synchronization to track and prioritize both my general game ideas as well as my planned features for the game I am working on. My ideas can come at anytime so being able to enter and update ideas via my phone and then see them later on my laptop is very helpful. Anyway, for future, would-love-to-make, games I just record the ideas as they come. For my works in progress, I use a prioritized check list. The bug fixes and small features always bubble to the top and the larger more complicated features sink to the bottom. Over time, I create an imaginary or real line line between the must-have, nice-to-have, and possibly-not-worth-it features. I launch the game once all the must-have features are completed. Post launch I begin work on the nice-to-haves, fixes for newly discovered bugs, and performance optimizations. Depending on my time and interest and the success or lack thereof of the game, I might tackle a handful of the possibly-not-worth-it features. Years ago, I worked on a desktop application where I iterated over a list like this for many years and released 4 major versions of the application. I completed nearly every idea I came up with. I had a lot more time back then and such an approach is simply not do-able now. And frankly it’s not worth it unless you’ve already attracted 100s of thousands of users/players within the first couple months of launch. All this to say that at some point we all have to let go of even the best ideas.

If I were the one that developed Puzzlewood Quests or a game like it and I was truly passionate about it and believed it should be successful, I would stop development on the current version except for bug fixes and would immediately begin work on it’s sequel. I would focus on the really cool features I had to compromise on in the first version and add or remove things based on player feedback for the first version. I would also re-work the graphics without completely abandoning them. Just my two cents.

#14

I do something similar with ideas as they come up, except I keep a Trello board. One of my lists is “High Priority”, which is usually bug fixes and the like. Another list is “Vague Ideas” where I store the things that I would like to do one day.  I’ve got tons of ideas and ways to improve the game as well as things to put into a sequel, but I’m interested in how developers may have changed the fundamental gameplay of their games due to some tradeoffs, and whether it turned out good or bad. Sometimes good things happen when you’re restricted.

It’s like with writing… I was reading an introduction to one of Neil Gaiman’s books, and he was saying that none of the writers he knows ever send in anything when the editor says, “Just write about whatever you want.”  But if an editor restricts them in some way, like, “Write a story for this cthulhu compilation,” then it becomes a much more interesting prospect.

And I totally agree about time – time is always a problem for me too these days. If Puzzlewood was my full-time job, then yeah, I’d be working on a sequel and probably creating some spin-offs using the same underlying engine: “Spanish Quest”, “Web Developer Quest”, etc.  But it’s far easier to just add new stuff into the existing game. I think at some point I will finally achieve some fame on slashdot with a headline like, “Developer works on same mobile game for 20 years.”  :-)

Dave

#15

I know that I went off on a bit of a tangent on my last post. To answer your original question though, the answer is both yes and no. In the desktop application I did years ago, the first couple of major versions were severely lacking in regards to what I wanted them to have. Specifically, it was an image browsing product but it lacked image thumbnails. It only let you view one image at a time. In version 2, I added simple thumbnails and in version 3 or 4 I implemented thumbnails the way I really wanted. I also implemented a ton of nice-to-have features and finally stopped development at version 4.8.7. So this is the “yes” answer. Since then though, I have done a much better job of setting expectations for myself. The first game I developed plus the one I am working on now are or will be very close to what I have envisioned for them. This isn’t because I am a marvelous developer but, on the contrary, because I have set my expectations very low! :wink: I am working my way up to building a medium-scale platformer but know I can’t do that yet and get all the features I want. If I did, I’d probably end up have to make tons of sacrifices. So, for now for me, I am just doing simple puzzle and single click type games.

I think you have a great idea with Puzzlewood Quest. Seriously, I would consider making a Puzzlewood Quest 2 and adding lots of the things you had to sacrifice in the first one while also pulling in what you did in the first. There are plenty of games in the app store with sequels that build on each other. One non-mobile game series that comes to mind is Mega Man. They are all basically the same game but there are about a dozen of them, each (for the most part) better than the previous.