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On the meaninglessness of death in games

I was playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 a while ago and enjoying it greatly. In my first sitting with the game I made it through the first 2 galaxies and accumulated ~30 lives. When I put down my controller and turned off the system I was feeling pretty on top of the world; however, when I started playing the next day, I quickly noticed something wasn't right. All of my lives were gone. Well, not all of them were gone, but I was back to the number that you start the game with. I was extremely disappointed. It's not as if I was going out of my way (well, not very far out of my way) to get, but I couldn't help thinking "What's the point of collecting extra lives if I don't get to keep them." It wasn't until much further in the game (Bowser's final castle if memory serves me correctly), that I finally hit a point where I exhausted my meager supply of lives and learned what purpose the lives actually have. When you run out of lives, you are forced to endure a stupid game over screen, kicked out of the level you were in, and lose your progress in the level (all checkpoints are reset). Now, this strikes me as just about as toothless as a game can get with regards to losing all of your lives, and about as worthless as it can get.

Let's contrast this to the original Super Mario Bros. for the NES. What happens in SMB when you lose all your lives? You lose the game. You can't continue any further. Is this harsh? Yes. Does it give you a very strong reason to stay alive? Certainly. So, in SMG2 the only pain we endure is the game wastes about 2 minutes + however long it takes us to get back to the checkpoint we were at. Is this harsh? Eh, more annoying than anything. Does it give you a strong reason to stay alive? Well, a little. All it does for me is make me want to quit. Am I saying that SMG2 should reset when you lose all your lives? Of course not. The game was designed to be played in multiple sittings. Losing all of your progress would invalidate. What I would suggest is doing away with the idea of lives entirely. They already have so little meaning, why not just completely get rid of them?

One of my favorite game types is the Roguelike. Now, I don't really like to play most Roguelikes, as I suck at them, but as a gameform (I don't like genre, so I'm inventing a word) I love them. One of the key features of the roguelike is permadeath (didn't invent that one, but I love the hell out of it), meaning when you die, you die FOREVER. Now, some people would (and do) get discouraged by this, but one of the other key features of most roguelikes is that they are procedurally generated. In this way, dying forever is actually a great feature as it gets to show off one of the key features of the roguelike, the dungeon generation. By randomizing the dungeon every time, one doesn't really mind all of the deaths, as you get to see new things the next time through. One of my favorite games and a real inspiration to me is Spelunky. Spelunky, if played perfectly, is a short game. Excluding the final level, the game can only take 47.5 minutes at maximum (well, unless you are really daring and good at dealing with the ghost). However, because the game is so unforgiving and the permanent deaths, the game derives much more playtime than those 47.5 minutes.

I'm not advocating permadeath in all games, but I think that many game designers need to think about death in their game in a holistic way. Does my game need death? Does death serve as more than just a temporary delay in my game? If it doesn't, what would better reinforce my core design.

Other Zelda analyses

Here is a similar analysis for Ocarina of Time. I like what he did regarding writing out the specific action required to complete puzzle, that being said it wouldn't really work for an analysis of Link to the Past. While OoT has plenty of grokable actions like "Light cobwebs on fire", if I were to do this for Link to the Past most of my nodes would be "Step on switch" or "Kill all enemies in the room" making such an anlysis rather inscrutable.

Zelda Dungeon Analysis, Part 1

The game I am currently making is a procedurally generated Zelda-like. This means that I have to try to recreate the dungeons of Zelda. This means that I have to understand what makes the Zelda dungeons work that special way that they do. To do this, I turn to my friend, systems analysis.
So, what does a sample Zelda "dungeon" (by dungeon, I don't necessarily mean dungeon, I just mean any location in the game that isn't overworld) look like?
Well, here is a lovely example:Now, you may say to yourself, "Bwah? I know Zelda dungeons, and that, my good sir, is no Zelda dungeon!" Well, that is a fair assessment.
What if I were to show you this instead:

Compiled map courtesy of http://ian-albert.com/games/legend_of_zelda_a_link_to_the_past_maps/, art assets owned by Nintendo

That's more like it, right?

Now, you've probably guessed the punchline , those are the same thing.
Ok, so with that out of the way, what does the top graph mean?
Here is a handy dandy legend:
Blue Diamond - Entrance or Exit
Blue Circle - Boring node
Red Circle - Enemy node
Green Circle - Puzzle node
Brown Circle - Enemy and puzzle node
Yellow Circle - Treasure node
Orange Circle - Treasure and Enemy node
connector with arrow - one way path

By "Boring node" I mean a room that has no enemies, puzzles, treasure, or traps. I.e. a room that is boring.

So, what are some statistics about this map?

Exits/Entrances: 2

Total Nodes Count: 20

Boring Nodes Count: 5

Interesting Nodes Count: 13

Total Non-exit Count: 18

Percent Interesting: 72%

Connections: 21

Percentage unnecessary nodes: 0%

Enemy nodes: 7

Percentage Enemy nodes: 38.9%

Treasure nodes: 4

Percentage Treasure nodes: 22.2%

Puzzle nodes: 5

Percentage Puzzle nodes: 28%

So, interesting things of note:
1. This map has two loops, one big, the other small. The small loop is easily erased as it doesn't substantively change the map. The big is easily erased by taking the one way arrow from the top orange node, connecting it to the exit node, and erasing the other connection to the exit node. Essentially the one-way arrow to a node near the exit node is already putting the final exit of the level near the orange node.
2. For all it's maze-like tendencies, there isn't a single room here that isn't absolutely necessary
(unless you count the two false starts at the beginning, more on those later).
3. There are also quite a few instances of two separate nodes occupying the same screen space. This will be tricky to achieve but should pay off well. To make a boring node less boring, segregate it completely from an interesting node but allow the interesting node to be visible. This achieves 3 things, the boring node gives the player a breather, the boring node is made more interesting, and, most importantly, the player is given a glimpse of something they want (action, treasure, etc.) creating a yearning to reach that node. By showing them the unattainable (at least currently) they desire it more.

4. Important treasure is always placed with lots of enemies (the orange nodes). This is good as it forces players to fight.

5. Puzzles ease the player into the level, which then gives over into a prolonged battle.
6. The two bottom boring nodes are actually rather fun as they represent a 3-way fork right at the beginning of the level and show the player the dead end they chose, but also the one true path that they should take. Perhaps they shouldn't be treated as separate nodes, but rather as a more complicated node.

So, what can we take away from this?
1. In the early stages of the game (this is from the first dungeon of Link to the Past) a small number of nodes is desirable (20 in this case).
2. It is ok to have "boring" nodes (although these shouldn't be boring). Players need the ability to catch their breath.
3. While enemies are the most common way to make something interesting, they account for under 50% of all nodes AND under 50% of all "interesting" nodes. Enemies are important, but are certainly not the only way.
4. There are very few branches. All that matters is giving the player the illusion of choice, not actually giving them choice. By making the rooms meander, you make the player feel like they aren't just moving in a straight line (See FF13 for an example of why making players just move in a straight line is a bad idea.).

Thus concludes part 1 of our Link to the Past Dungeon Analysis. Next time, we shall delve into the dark world!

Standalone CircleCat

Progress

A lot of code maintenance today. Things are much more neatly organized. Here is a screenshot of the current progress. It now creates a maze populated with enemies. Next is making it actually interesting.

Hello

Welcome to CircleCat Games. This is the first post of, hopefully, many. The goal of CircleCat is to produce the kind of games we want to play, i.e. personal, simple, deep, and addictive.