Zeboyd Games » Robert

9 Things We Can Learn from Dark Souls

Robert — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 23:37:19 +0000

Dark Souls has gotten a lot of attention for featuring an extremely high level of difficulty, however it would be unfair to dismiss it as just another masochistic game. In this article, I examine nine areas that Dark Souls excels in and discuss how we can apply those lessons towards improving game design.

Level Design – Dark Souls has some of the most complex sets of level designs I’ve ever seen in a game. Each level typically has one main path but countless detours, secret areas, and shortcuts, and is usually connected to a number of other levels at various points as well. Despite the high level of complexity and my horrible sense of direction, I’ve rarely gotten lost in the game DESPITE the complete absence of an in-game map! The fact that the game can maintain such a high level of map complexity without completely confusing the player is a testament to the skill of the developer’s ability to create memorable areas, both through the visual style and through the memorable events that happen therein.

One aspect of the level design that bears special mention is the game’s use of 3D space. The game is full of stairs, inclines, ladders, and cliffs. Rarely a minute passes where the player isn’t going up or down in some way. Even when there are not actual parts of the level above or below the player, there are always interesting things to look at in all directions such as the cavernous roof with a small opening for strange light in the top of the cave that you’re exploring or the valley below the cliffside undead village that you’re fighting for your life in.

If you’re a professional level designer, you need to study the level design in Dark Souls to gain a better understanding of how you can improve your craft. If you’re making a 3D game, take advantage of that fact and build your levels in every direction, not just x & y.

Sense of Scope – This aspect goes along with the level design but is sufficiently important to be worth discussing individually. Not since Shadow of the Colossus came out in 2005 have I seen a game that has such a great mastery of portraying the scope of its world to the player. While you’re exploring an area in Dark Souls, you might see a castle on the distant horizon. In most games, that castle would just be a nice piece of background art that the artists drew ’cause it looks pretty. Not in Dark Souls. Keep playing and no doubt before too long, you’ll actually be exploring that castle (and have found something new on the horizon that you’ll explore later).

This sense of scope also applies to the game’s enemies. There are moments where you might see something in the distant that’s so far off that you’re not even sure what it is. Get a little closer and you may realize to your abject horror that the huge thing you see is alive and will probably destroy you without a moment’s thought if you get any closer.

By portraying a sense of scope to the player, Dark Souls makes its world, enemies and quests feel epic in a way that simply having a long game would not accomplish. Dark Souls does this through its use of levels and enemies, but there are other ways to give a sense of scope. For example, in the old SNES RPG, Lufia, the game begins with a playable introduction that lets the player use a group of legendary heroes. By seeing their power and the power of their foes firsthand, it gives a clear sense of the range of power in that world right from the start.

Enemy variety – It boggles my mind how so many big budget games today can have huge worlds, and then fail to populate them with interesting enemies. Take Deus Ex: Human Revolution for example. It’s a good and often great game, but in the first 6 hours of playing it, I only saw one real enemy archetype – guy with gun. Sure, some of the guys were walking and others were standing around, some of them were soldiers and others were punks, some had sniper rifles and others had machine guns, but for most practical purposes, the vast majority of enemies were very similar to each other, both visually and mechanically. How boring.

Not Dark Souls. Just in the first hour or two, I saw skeletons that won’t stay dead, ghosts that could only be hurt under specific conditions, undead soldiers with a variety of weapons (including fire bombs), poisonous rats, well armored knights, and some impressive bosses. Sure, many of the enemies were fantasy archetypes, but they each had their own distinct visual style that set them apart and more importantly, they behaved differently from each other thus resulting in more varied gameplay.

Environmental combat – Walk to an arena. Have enemies spawn. Kill the enemies to unlock the next arena. Repeat. Bleh.

When did we forget that the environment can be a great way to add variety and depth to combat? Exploring a tight passage way in Dark Souls? Guess you’d better put away that huge broadsword since its wide swings will just bounce off the walls. On a narrow ledge high above a deadly fall? Be wary of using fast, weak weapons because you might just combo yourself into an early grave. Better yet, you might decide to knock off that tough enemy off a cliff and avoid an otherwise hard fight.

Just fighting can get old. Add non-enemy factors like the environment to keep your combat engaging throughout the entire game.

Death matters – Stuck on a relatively hard part of your typical AAA game? No worries – just keep trying until you get lucky. Death doesn’t matter since you can just reload whenever you mess up.

In Dark Souls, death hurts…some of the time. You lose all of your souls (the game’s currency) whenever you die, but if you can return to the spot of your death without dying again, you can reclaim them. Dying does return you to the last bonfire you’ve activated, but those are usually never more than a few minutes away, what with all the shortcuts you unlock. It’s a far cry from the old 8-bit games where you could have been playing for an hour or two and have to start the entire game over due to running out of lives, but there’s still a penalty involved for failure. And hey, sometimes you can take advantage of the death system – items are not lost upon death so making a nearly suicidal run to grab a valuable piece of equipment or treasure before your demise can be a valid strategy at times.

When failure has no penalty, tension is lost and victory becomes a matter of inevitability and loses its feeling of triumph.

Freedom of Solution – I’m currently playing a sorcerer in Dark Souls who wields a giant holy halberd. A halberd, for those unfamiliar with ancient weaponry, is basically a spear with an axe at the end. A wizard who is a master of the giant spear/axe – how often have you seen that in a game?

Dark Souls gives the player a wealth of possible equipment, stats, spells and items to play with and lets them forge their own solutions to the game’s many challenges. Not only that, but the order that the player attempts those challenges is largely left up to the player (although some areas are easier than others).

By allowing the player to dictate their style of gameplay, you let them play the game they want to play and not the game you think they should be playing.

Style and creativity trump technology – Dark Souls doesn’t have the most advanced engine out on the market. The frame rate suffers in the more demanding areas, the ragdoll physics sometimes result in laughable results (like when an enemy corpse gets stuck on your foot and you start dragging them around), the textures aren’t always the highest quality, and the camera doesn’t always do what you might want it to. However, in 10 years, when people will have long forgotten many of the more technologically advanced games released this year in favor of even more technologically advanced games, people will still be going back and playing Dark Souls and thinking “What a beautiful game this is!” The game presents an amazing and cohesive world filled with terrifying enemies and that’s what matters.

A great engine is nice, but vision is more important. The engine should serve the design’s purpose and not the other way around.

Progression isn’t just stats – About 5 hours into the game, I decided I wanted to start over and try a drastically different character build. I was able to surpass my progress from the first time in less than half the time that it had taken me the first time around. My stats weren’t any better the second time, but I had gained experience and understanding into the game’s mechanics, the enemies, and the levels that allowed me to make much more rapid progression.

Allowing the player’s character to level up is great. Allowing the player themselves to level up is even better. Well designed games have enough depth that the player can constantly improve themselves.

Multiplayer for people who hate multiplayer – I’m not a big fan of most multiplayer games. Sure, it’s fun if you can get your friends together to play some co-op, but with most of my friends scattered around the world and all of us with our own jobs, families, and lives, it sometimes feels like more work than it’s worth to arrange a multiplayer game session. Playing with random strangers is an option, but from past experience, I’ve found that for every decent mature player that you run into, you’re bound to run into twice as many immature ones. Again, it doesn’t feel worth it.

Dark Souls handles multiplayer in a way I can appreciate. You can read and leave messages for other players offering tips (only using a set vocabulary and syntax so you don’t have to worry about long strings of obscenities). You can occasionally catch a glimpse of another player in your vicinity. And players can join other players as both friends and foes using certain items. However, if you want to, you can ignore all this (just stay undead all the time if you’re worried about invading players).

Would it be nice for the more multiplayer inclined players out there if there was a robust matchmaking system that let you team up with your friends? Oh, probably. However, the way it is currently set up is ideal for people like myself who aren’t fans of traditional multiplayer experiences.

Conclusion – Dark Souls is not a perfect game but it is a well designed one. As game designers, we would be well advised to learn the lessons it has to teach.

Zeboyd Games is working on Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness Episode 3

Robert — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 06:41:37 +0000

Zeboyd Games is pleased to announce that we are currently working on Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness Episode 3.

Yes, we’re serious.

Introducing Zeboyd Games

Robert — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 20:23:02 +0000

Since I expect we’ll get a lot of new visitors after our big announcement at PAX later this week, I thought some introductions to bring the newcomers up to speed might be in order. Hopefully some of this information will be new to our longtime fans as well.

Zeboyd Games was created in 2010. The first game that we released was Breath of Death VII: The Beginning. Our second game was Cthulhu Saves the World. You can get both games on PC via Steam here, via Gamersgate here, or on the XBox 360 here and here. We have received a number of positive reviews from sites like Eurogamer, Joystiq, and RPGamer.

Our third game will be announced at PAX later this week. We’re all very excited.

Zeboyd Games is primarily a 2-man operation. There’s me, Robert Boyd – I do the design, writing, and programming – and there’s Bill Stiernberg – he does the graphics, animation, and level designs. In addition to helping to make our games, Bill has also gained a certain amount of Internet fame for having one of the oldest DNF preorders. We’ve also worked with various talented individuals such as Gordon McNeil (did the music for Cthulhu Saves the World) and Alex Mauer (doing the music for the secret game that will be announced at PAX).

As for me personally, here are some random factoids:

I’m 30 years old, married, and have 4 daughters.

My top 10 favorite games of all time in no particular order are probably: Resident Evil 4, Siren 2, Pac-Man: Championship Edition DX, , Titan Quest, League of Legends, Chrono Trigger, Persona 4, Lunar: Eternal Blue, and Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne.

My oldest daughter’s favorite game is Final Fantasy IV.

My younger daughters’s favorite game is Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure.

My wife’s favorite game is Plants vs. Zombies.

My favorite authors are Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, and Brandon Sanderson.

My favorite mangaka is Junji Ito.

I lived in Taiwan for several years and speak Mandarin Chinese as a second language.

My favorite color is purple but only if it’s dark. Like Evil Purple.

Now as for how I got into game development…

I’ve been a fan of RPGs ever since I first heard about the original Dragon Warrior and have long wanted to make them. When Microsoft announced their XBLIG service that would allow anyone to make games I was very excited. I started out by making a couple of text adventures – Epiphany in Spaaace! and Molly the Were-Zompire. Then I played Guadia Quest (one of the games in Retro Game Challenge) and thought, “I could totally pull this off!” Thus Breath of Death VII: The Beginning was born.

My basic design philosophy is that the RPG genre is a great field with limitless possibilities that can be unlocked through a combination of learning from the past and trying out new things. Many developers and publishers seem to feel that the RPG genre is broken and the only way to make good RPGs these days is by combining them with other genres. Now don’t get me wrong – there have been a number of great hybrid RPGs like Mass Effect, Bioshock, and Borderlands that I’ve enjoyed playing – but I think there’s still a place for innovation and quality in the RPG genre without needing to change the genre into something it’s not. I think we’re seeing a lot of this promise in the indie game scene with quality, innovative games like Desktop Dungeons, Recettear, Dungeons of Dredmor, and hopefully our games (both present and future) as well.

And here’s Bill introduction!

I’m 27, and I’m about to be married (Yay! ). I have an engineering degree with a minor in business, and I’m a licensed attorney. My legal background (focused on IP) is incredibly useful for our team and company. My passion has always been the videogame industry.

My favorite games in no particular order include Super Mario Bros., Chrono Trigger, Quake 3, Super Metroid, StarFox, Ocarina of Time, Metal Gear Solid 3, Castlevania SOTN, Street Fighter IV. I enjoy almost every genre.

As far as game development, I’ve always been interested and involved with it my whole life. I used to code my own games in QBasic, and later worked on mods and maps for popular FPS games. I vastly prefer making game assets to coding, but having some experience in that area has been invaluable. When I started working with Robert, it seemed the ideal situation for both of us. We both have a passion for making games, and we appreciate the classics as well as newer well-known and lesser-known games. I love working within the RPG genre, as bringing life to our team’s ideas and producing these worlds and characters is extremely rewarding.

From Dust Review

Robert — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 17:51:53 +0000

From Dust Review

From Dust is the first game that Eric Chahi has designed in over 10 years. As a huge fan of his past work (Out of this World/Another World and Heart of Darkness), I was very eager to give From Dust a try. What I found was very different than what I had expected.

In From Dust, you control a disembodied force that is trying to help and protect various aborigine tribes. In the story mode, your goal is to help the tribes create villages at set points on the map which will eventually unlock a gateway that permits travel to the next map. You also have the secondary goals of spreading vegetation across the land and finding secret points. You do all this by telling the villagers to travel to set locations on the map, absorbing elements like sand and water and depositing them elsewhere, and by using various spells. For example, if a river blocks your path, you might grab a big chunk of sand and place it at a specific point so as to redirect the river and allow safe passage.

From Dust features what is quite possibly the best depiction of water in any video game to date. The water looks amazing and behaves just like you would expect it to. It’s very fun to just mess around with the maps and see how the water reacts as you change the face of the landscape. And when a typhoon approaches a village and the villagers use the Repel Water spell, the results are breathtaking.

Unfortunately, just messing around with the landscape was the source of most of my enjoyment in the story mode. Simply put, the story mode isn’t very good. It walks an uncomfortable line between sandbox game and strategy game and doesn’t really do either justice. There aren’t enough options to make for a truly compelling sandbox game and the tasks that need to be accomplished in order to proceed aren’t interesting enough to make for a rewarding strategy game. Not only that, but the controls can be annoying at times – like trying to grab some water but grabbing sand instead because your cursor was slightly off.

To make matters worse, the game subscribes to the Braid philosophy of story design of “Tell, don’t show.” Most of the story is locked away in hidden paragraphs of text, with very little of the story coming up while actually playing game. Given that Eric Chahi has shown himself to be quite capable of telling moving stories without words in his past games, the fact that From Dust relies so heavily on exposition from outside the game itself is highly disappointing.

However, all is not lost! Though I found the story mode to be a disappointment, the challenge mode is a different matter all together. This mode contains a number of puzzle levels – maps where you are given a limited set of powers and a time limit and asked to complete a certain task. The first few levels in Challenge mode aren’t too exciting, but the difficulty and cleverness of the levels quickly increases as you go on. There were a number of moments where I thought I had the right solution but it wasn’t working out. Then I had an “Aha!” moment where I realized that doing something drastically different would provide a much more elegant solution to the problem. If that’s not the sign of a great puzzle game, I don’t know what is.

Whether or not you enjoy From Dust will depend on what you expect out of it. As a story-based strategy game, it is a failure. As a sandbox God game, it’s somewhat fun but lacks depth but as a puzzle game, it’s unique and even has moments of brilliance. Score accordingly.

From Dust come out tomorrow on XBLA.

Dwarfs!? review

Robert — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 00:32:50 +0000

Dwarfs!? review

Dwarfs!? is a game of chaos. The titular dwarfs continually spawn from your bases and then randomly head off in any direction. When left to their own devices, they’ll inevitably unleash some disaster like a flood, lava flow, or monster hive. It’s up to you to keep them from destroying themselves, while simultaneously earning the most gold and racking up the highest possible score for the online leaderboards. Like multi-tasking? If your answer is yes, then Dwarfs!? could be the game for you.

Dwarfs like to dig and love gold which is good for you since gold is the key to everything you do. You can use gold to tell a specific dwarf to go to a specific spot (ideally a spot full of riches), use it to build additional outposts, use it to create and upgrade warrior dwarfs (essential for fighting off enemies), and use it to quarantine off disaster areas. I have heard some people complain about the fact that directing individual dwarfs costs gold, but as long as you let the dwarfs move on their own most of the time and only intervene when you need to (or when it’s profitable), I didn’t find it to be a problem.

The main mode of the game lets you pick a difficulty level and a time limit and then tasks you with gaining the most points possible. Changing the speed of the game doesn’t affect how quickly the time runs out so there’s a balancing act – you want to go as fast as possible to get the most gold and earn the most points, but at the same time, you don’t want to go so fast that you neglect a problem before it’s too late and your tunnels are all full of lava or infested with horrible monsters. The game’s scoring system gives the player points for reaching various milestones as well as certain achievements and there’s much fun to be had just in discovering what actions give the most points.

The game also has other modes like Rush mode where instead of giving the player a time limit, dwarfs are spawned at a very fast rate and the game ends when 200 dwarfs die and Campaign mode which contains short specific scenarios like protect your base for a set amount of time while natural disasters approach from every direction. My favorite mode, however, is Base Defense which is a full blown tower defense game using some of the monsters from the regular game. The catch is that in the first few rounds, the player can use their gold to dig out the path that the enemies will take – creating a well designed route is essential to doing well in this mode.

Between the various modes and difficulty levels, there’s a lot more game here than you might think at first glance. And the option to pick a time limit in some modes is very welcome as it makes the game easy to fit into your schedule whether you have just a few minutes or a few hours.

If you’re looking for a complex mining simulator, look elsewhere. However, if you enjoy fast paced arcade games with a dash of RTS and an emphasis on improving your score, Dwarfs!? comes highly recommended.

Dwarfs!? is available on Steam for $10.

Concept Art for Breath of Death VII & Cthulhu Saves the World

Robert — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 16:45:41 +0000

Due to public request, here is some concept art from Breath of Death VII & Cthulhu Saves the World.

Breath of Death VII:
DEM
SARA

Cthulhu Saves the World:
Box Art
Cthulhu
Umi
October
Ember
Dacre

Enjoy!

Cthulhu Saves the World/Breath of Death VII combo pack coming to Steam & Gamersgate on July 13th for $3

Robert — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 22:32:08 +0000

Cthulhu Saves the World/Breath of Death VII combo pack coming to Steam & Gamersgate on July 13 for $3

Cthulhu Saves the World and Breath of Death VII: The Beginning will be available on the PC for the first time on July 13^th, 2011. The two games will be bundled together in a convenient combo pack that will sell for a mere $3 from Steam and Gamersgate. Friends and family of the developers attribute the low price to cosmic insanity, induced by the developer’s prolonged exposure to Lovecraftian monstrosities.

Cthulhu Saves the World:

The lord of insanity, Cthulhu was all set to plunge the world into insanity and destruction when his powers were sealed by a mysterious sorcerer. The only way for him to break the curse is to become a true hero. Save the world to destroy it in an epic parody RPG journey of redemption, romance, and insanity!

Not content to merely repackage existing content and sell it at an insanely low price, the PC version of Cthulhu Saves the World will feature numerous improvements over the original XBox 360 release. Dubbed the Cthulhu Saves the World: Super Hyper Enhanced Championship Edition Alpha Diamond DX Plus Alpha FES HD – Premium Enhanced Game of the Year Collector’s Edition (without Avatars!) or CSTW:SHECEADDPAFH – PEGYCE (WA!) for short, the new version will include such features as:

Cthulhu’s Angels game mode – Cthulhu is too lazy to save the world so he talks a bunch of beautiful women into saving it for him! This remix mode features new dialogue, new playable characters (Molly the Were-Zompire! Elonalina the generic healer! Dark Knight Umi! Low level October!), new music, new abilities, and much, much more!

Director’s Commentary mode – Specially marked commentary icons scattered throughout the game tell the inside story on how one of pop culture’s most popular cosmic monstrosities became an RPG hero for great justice!

Rebalanced Gameplay – Many abilities and monsters have been rebalanced for even silkier smooth RPG gameplay! Plus a new Insanity difficulty mode and new super-hard bonus dungeon have been added to challenge even the best players ability to grind out higher LVs (because they’re really not as skilled as they like to brag)!

Unlockable Character Bromides – Due to the frothing demand for sexy Cthulhu art!

As well as all of the great features of the original release such as:

Old school RPG style mixed with modern design sensibilities!
Inflict insanity upon your opponents for fun and profit!
6-10 hour quest with unlockable game modes & difficulty levels for increased replay value.
All of the great features players know and love from Breath of Death VII: The Beginning have returned – fast-paced gameplay, combo system, random encounter limits, branching LV-Ups, and more!

These enhancements will also be made available to owners of the 360 version of the game via a free patch released at or near the PC version’s release date.

Breath of Death VII: The Beginning:

Resurrect the classic era of RPGs with the retro parody RPG, Breath of Death VII: The Beginning. Join Dem the Skeleton Knight, Sara the ghost historian, Lita the vampire techie, and Erik the zombie prince as they explore an undead world in search of the secrets of the past. Laugh! Cry! Laugh some more!

Key features:

Old school RPG style mixed with modern design sensibilities!
Fast-paced turn based combat!
4-6 hour quest with multiple game modes & difficulty levels for added replay value.
Easy to understand branching character customization system with frequent LV-Ups.
Multi-character unite techniques and combo break system for added depth!
PC enhancements – Save anywhere functionality, new Easy mode, and new customization options.

Check out what the press are saying about our RPGs:

“It’s rare to find a game that is both entertaining and genuinely funny, and so far Cthulhu Saves the World is both.”
-Joystiq

“So when I say Cthulhu Saves The World is already one of my favourite games of 2011 you can be sure I’ve not been swayed by its astonishingly precise pastiche of early 1990s JRPG cliches, strident synth music, chunky menus and all. It’s simply a really clever, hugely enjoyable game, and it’s as much honest tribute as cheeky spoof.”
-Eurogamer

“Breath of Death VII: The Beginning is a real surprise. It’s an RPG that feels like it was a classic from back in the day, but it doesn’t have any RPG hang-ups.”
-WorthPlaying

“For an RPG whose sheer fun factor is on par with a lot of the $30 to $60 games people shell out multiple bills for, it’s an extreme bargain.”
-RPGFan Breath of Death VII review

Breath of Death VII: The Beginning/Cthulhu Saves the World
-Winner of RPGamer’s 2010 Best Downloadable award

For press inquiries and media assets for Cthulhu Saves the World, Breath of Death VII: The Beginning and Zeboyd Games, contact Robert Boyd at rdespair@gmail.com or visit our website at http://zeboyd.com

Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky Review

Robert — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 23:44:14 +0000

Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky Review
for the PSP

In the early 90s, Working Designs localized an RPG series called Lunar for the Sega CD. These games took advantage of the latest (at the time) in CD technology to provide a high quality soundtrack and fully animated cutscenes, but what these games are most remembered for these days are their endearing characters and amusing scripts.

Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky comes the closest to capturing the feel of a Lunar game of any game I’ve played since the Sega CD era.

Trails in the Sky does this by featuring a fantastic localization with a ton of dialogue. Many reviews have likened Trails in the Sky to a novel and that’s an apt comparison. The game isn’t afraid to take its time to fully develop the game’s world and memorable characters. Even skipping much of the bonus content and non-essential dialogue, it still took me about 35 hours to complete the game and I daresay that story and dialogue took up at least half of that time. You’d be hard pressed to find another RPG so focused on story.

That’s not to say that the non-story elements in Trails in the Sky are lacking. Combat plays out like a streamlined Strategy/RPG offering more planning than most traditional turn-based RPGs while not being as slow paced as your typical Strategy/RPG. Stat and ability development offer a nice mix between allowing customization (a Materia-esque magic & accessory system) and making each character unique. Secondary characters join and leave the party on a regular basis, keeping things fresh. To go along with the heavy emphasis on story, most non-boss fights can be avoided without much difficulty. And despite being a port from the Japanese-only PC original, the UI works well, graphics look good, and load times are negligible.

Trails in the Sky’s methodical pace and focus on characters and world building isn’t for everyone, but for gamers looking to lose themselves in an RPG, it’s a rare treat. Ending on an especially exciting cliffhanger, the sequel can’t come out soon enough.

Breath of Death VII PC, Free Stuff, and Donate Button

Robert — Thu, 19 May 2011 15:20:32 +0000

Some of you already know this, but just to make it official – the PC version of Cthulhu Saves the World will actually be a combo pack that also includes Breath of Death VII: The Beginning. Oh and there will be a few minor improvements to Breath of Death VII since we’re using the Cthulhu Saves the World engine for it (stuff like being able to save anywhere). All this for $3. Yes, we’re insane to offer so much RPG goodness for such a low price, but I think Cthulhu would have wanted it this way..

Porting BoDVII to the PC has been much easier and faster than I expected so it’ll probably be done this week. If you’ve already signed up for the CSTW beta testing, I’ll probably send you an email offering access to the BoDVII PC beta testing as well. The actual CSTW PC beta testing will probably begin next week. Oh and I’m sorry, but we don’t need any more beta testers – we’ve already got plenty.

I’ve added two new documents to the Free Stuff section of the website, along with a link on the right to make the Free Stuff section easier to find. The first of these is the original design document for Cthulhu Saves the World with notes talking about how the design changed from its origin to the finished game. Since there are a lot of spoilers in there, I highly recommend not reading it until you’ve finished the game. The second document is the text file that I used to keep track of enemy stats & abilities in Breath of Death VII. Hopefully, you find these two documents interesting.

The stuff in our free stuff section is, well, free, but if you’ve especially enjoyed any of the things there, please consider making a donation to Zeboyd Games via the nifty Paypal donate button that we’ve just installed on the right side of the blog.

Guiding Gamer Expectations

Robert — Fri, 06 May 2011 18:52:11 +0000

As I was playing two very different indie games over the course of this week, I was reminded of just how important expectations are in determining whether or not people enjoy a particular game.

Exhibit One, the PC indie title, Capsized. Gorgeous graphics, but I didn’t particularly care for the gameplay. However, I have to wonder how much of my dislike for the game from the game itself and how much of it came from me expecting to get a Metroid style action/exploration game and instead getting a run & gun shooter with a complex control scheme.

Exhibit Two, the PC indie title, Dwarfs!? I’ve put in a couple hours into this game and so far, I’m really enjoying it. However, going online, I discovered that many people hated it because it’s not a complex simulation like Dwarf Fortress. Instead, it’s a fast-paced, score-focused arcade game that’s kind of like an out of control top-down Lemmings. Oh and it’s got a well done tower defense game as one of its bonus modes.

When people’s expectations don’t match the reality of a product, disappointment almost inevitably sets in regardless of the quality therein. You could have the best orange in the world – it still makes for a crummy apple.

With both Capsized and Dwarfs!?, much of the confusion came because of the setting. Capsized is a 2D platformer with a setting similar to Metroid so I expected similar gameplay as well. Dwarfs!? and Dwarf Fortress both feature dwarf colonies digging out tunnels as their basic premise so some players expected they would play similarly as well.

However, there are other ways that player expectations can become misguided. Consider Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. Dragon Quarter is one of the most brilliant RPGs of all time, a true piece of gaming art. However, it did horribly at retail. Why? Because the fans were expecting another Breath of Fire III, a fun, colorful, and fairly stereotypical fantasy RPG, and instead got a very dark sci-fi/fantasy blend with several experimental gameplay systems.

Shadow of the Colossus is considered one of the finest games ever created. And yet, I bet you if you had taken the exact same game and all you did was change the name to The Legend of Zelda: Shadow of the Colossus and replaced the two leads with Link and Zelda that the game’s reception would have been drastically worse due to failed expectations.

Or take pricing. Players have different expectations for $60 games than they do for $15 games than they do for $1 games. This can be either advantageous (great value!) or disadvantageous (overpriced!) to the developer. To use a personal example, I purchased Bioshock 2 for $5 in a recent Steam sale and so far, I’ve been loving it. Would I have had the same reaction if I had paid $60 for it? Maybe not.

Or consider Mirror’s Edge. It’s a great and unique game, but had underwhelming sales. Had the game been designed & marketed first and foremost as a unique take on the racing genre, I daresay it would have sold drastically better than it did. As it is, people played it expecting a FPS/platformer, finished the short story mode, were unimpressed and set the game aside, not realizing that the story mode was basically just an extended tutorial for the really fun stuff – becoming totally awesome while doing time trials & speed runs.

With expectations being so critical to a game’s success, both critically and commercially, what are some things that can be done to help gamers to have the proper expectations for our games?

1. Price your game appropriately. My simple rule for game pricing is “What is the highest price we can charge for this game while still making the game an incredible deal?”

2. If your game has superficial similarities to a popular game but the gameplay is very different, you need to make these differences very obvious in any and all marketing you do for the game.

3. If your game is a sequel to a highly respected franchise but features major differences from previous titles, consider releasing it as a spin-off instead of a main game entry. This advice is less applicable if the series is widely considered past its prime and in need of a reboot.

4. Long held expectations can take time to change so start your marketing early. If I’ve been hearing details about your game for months, then I’m probably going to have a good idea of what to expect when I finally get to play it. If the first I hear of it is when it shows up on Steam’s New Arrival list, I have much less to base my expectations on and so there’s a much higher chance of inaccurate expectations forming.

5. Take care when describing your game that you don’t inadvertently overemphasize less important aspects. For example, with Capsized, one of the features listed in their Steam description was “massive non-linear environments” which combined with the sci-fi setting, naturally made me think of Metroid.

6. Name your games with care. I feel this is something we did successfully with our first RPG, Breath of Death VII: The Beginning. Just from reading the title, the average fan of RPGs should be able to correctly guess that our game is 1) an RPG. 2) a parody, and 3) undead-themed.

7. Make sure that the player knows how hard your game is. Some people love hard games and others prefer easy games so you want to make sure your game gets matched up with its correct audience. Super Meat Boy did a great job of this. Its Steam description contains phrases like “tough as nails”, “old school difficulty of classic NES titles,” and “difficulty from hard to soul crushing.” Its difficulty is a selling point, not a surprise. Conversely, the excellent PS2 horror game, Siren, failed to emphasize its extremely high level of difficulty (seriously, it’s one of the hardest story-based games of all time) in its marketing and so much of the backlash towards game was a result of people finding it frustrating.

Too many great games have underperformed because of misguided expectations. By keeping gamer expectations in mind when we design and market our games, we can help our games to be appreciated for what they actually are and avoid being disliked for what they are not.