Settling Down

Right, it's time to start filling out brief specifics. The first mechanic I want to focus on is the mobility a grappling hook provides. In my earlier post I mentioned Just Cause and Worms, but another game that has heightened mobility from a grappling hook-like mechanic is Attack on Titan flash game. It is very simplistic but the grappling hooks allow you to propel yourself through a city of titans with incredible speed so the player can reach the titan's weak points on the back of their necks. The game required players to react quickly to escape the titan's attacks and move around to their back in time to strike. Despite its simplicity it was an incredibly entertaining game.
Other games that give the player a tool that provides heightened mobility is the Portal series. This is different to pulling yourself up to a ledge but the mode of thinking it provides is very similar in that no place is out of reach and exploration of the tools abilities becomes a large part of the game experience. Imagine if a grappling hook or portal gun was available in Assassin's Creed? I would totally be down for some portal assassinations.

The second mechanic I find interesting is that of the 'lives' system. This points to the mechanic of 're-spawning' as it is pretty much the only reasonable alternative. Looking at the old arcade games like Pacman and Missile Command, or another personal favourite; Crash Bandicoot, lives are a way of telling the players how many mistakes they can make before they have to suffer particular consequences, be it losing all your progress since your last save or losing the game entirely.

The arcade games were a lot harsher with their lives system because the games weren't designed for extensive progress-making, instead more of a 15-30 minute burst of excitement. They were supposed to be played by lots of people over a short amount of time to earn maximum profit. Games like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro were more of an investment by gamers in that they were to be played on a personal disk, therefore played over several sessions. Having a less critical failure system made sense.
It is arguable that this type of thinking was what developed games that use the re-spawn mechanic. Players can die and return to the action within seconds with few, or no consequences. The games flow becomes much faster paced and progress is a natural part of the game. Games like Dark Souls require the player so die so that they learn where certain obstacles are. There is still risk involved for losing your best loot but the dying itself doesn't ruin a player's game.

Other games like Halo incorporate re-spawning in such a way that dying is only a minor setback which can be overcome with only 10 seconds of patience. In the campaign it may mean starting again from the last checkpoint but there are no other real penalties.

The Devil May Cry series used the mechanic of re-spawning after death in such a way that if characters did die, starting from the last checkpoint was easy enough (and even had items that resurrected you on the spot) but you would take a heft score penalty post-game. The main consequence of death was the player's own dissatisfaction of their final score and the mist determined players would try to get through without dying. This meant that the value of a re-spawn was determined by the player's own standards.
The last mechanic I will focus on is that of a time limit. Many, many games utilise time in one way or another. Be it a time limit to survive by, a way of earning better rewards/score or a means of competition. I will be looking particularly at count-down timers an what they represent and encourage. In Starcraft there is a mission where the player must defend their base from waves of enemy onslaught for half an hour as evacuation vehicles arrive. This mechanic changed the player's behaviour in multiple ways. Firstly they knew exactly how long the mission was going to last for and had to attempt to get as many resources and upgrade accomplished as they could before it ran out. The timer also encouraged players to fight more and more desperately because as the timer ticked down, enemy waves became more intense and the longer they played the mission for the harder it got. When there was only 30 seconds left all hell would break loose and strategies such as using your basic workers to hold the line was valid as long as you held out for that 00:00.

A countdown timer in a game such a Warcraft takes the form of a "cooldown" time where a spell or ability, once used, has to wait a predetermined amount of seconds before it can be used again. This balances out the game so that more powerful abilities take longer to recharge and using them becomes quite a strategic choice. Often such abilities will tip the balance in the players favour and they open a fight with it, or they save it for when they are desperate. Abilities with a smaller cooldown are used far less sparingly because the player can count on being able to use the ability multiple times within a fight and it is just a matter of micromanaging fast enough.

Lastly, a countdown timer could be used as a length through which an ability lasts for. In Spyro there were fireball and flying power-ups that only lasted for a short amount of time This set a challenge to a player to make the most of the ability before it depleted. It was never critical to progress in the game but rewarded more skilled players who were quick enough with better rewards and a higher completion percentage. Putting a time limit on parts of the game automatically creates tension for the player. They have to perform under circumstances that they have no control over. Unless the game specifically has objects/abilities etc. that affect the time, that clock is going to keep on ticking down regardless of what you do. Sometimes that can be incredibly exciting as you make it with .17 of a second left (see my "Never tell me the odds" achievement on Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, I nearly cried, it was beautiful) or they can be endlessly frustrating as you fail time and time again because of one mistake you made just before you finished.