This is it. This is why I love Heat Signature. And with Glory missions and traits, you can find yourself in these desperation situations almost by default, meaning you have to push the limits of both the game's mechanics, and how you play. And that's just so rewarding.
I think difficulty also actually adds a lot to the "narrative" or "feel" of a game. Perfect example is XCOM: Enemy Unknown. The game literally starts with the all powerful shady government guy _wishing you luck_ and telling you the fate of the world rests on your efforts. And then the game supports this threatening introduction by making you always feel one step behind the aliens right until the end of the game. This lets the desperation from the narrative actually leak into and mingle with the gameplay difficulty, creating a real connection with your soldiers because they start to feel heroic as they triumph and fail against what feels like ridiculous odds. The base building starts to feel important because you're aware every decision is influencing your battles, and the battles feel important because the game is hard enough that the loot is always necessary to your survival and progression. If you play on super easy you're left wondering why the Council is telling you Earth is at risk as you effortlessly gun down Sectoids. If you play on Classic or Impossible, suddenly you actually feel like you're embroiled in a battle with a world-ending calamity.
I think that's what makes Roguelikes and the current trend with Battle Royale so appealing. The loot and items you get is randomized so you have to make do with the tools you currently have. Usually in these games there's a tier list of which items are the best and worst to get in a run and normally the lower tier items wouldn't see much use in the game but the randomized nature creates situations where you have to use it this item to it's full potential to win. I think an XCOM style game is perfect to explore this philosophy. Creating situations where you go in fully prepared for anything and then take those tools away either by incapacitating your team members or applying some kind of battlefield effect like the Jammer in Heat Signature.
I think you've hit the nail on the head. It's impossible (and would be boring anyway) to have all the tools/choices be balanced and so pretty quickly a meta develops which dictates what choices are the CORRECT choices - see items in League of Legends and cards in Deck Constructed Magic: The Gathering. When you're given a limited tool set, you apreciate and enjoy what you're given - even things that would be crappy in the context of the entire toolset. Limited Magic: The Gathering demonstrates this well. Drafters get to use and enjoy nearly every card in every new set whereas Standard players only care about the relatively few cards considered 'Constructed playable'. I could never get in to League of Legends because I hated being given a plethora of choices and then being told that the majority of them were wrong and in a lot of cases there is only one correct choice. Does anyone know if there is a MOBA with random loot? Sure competetive peeps would hate it (RNG! Grrr!) but I think it'd be pretty fun.
I had an idea. So I've been watching your dailies on Heat Signature and I see you pause a lot. And I'm entertained. But I wish there was a replay system so I could see it in real time. 2 minutes of twitchy carnage.
Like an in-game recording feature that omits any time when you pause the game, then compiles those separate recordings into a single playback per mission? I would love that!
The balance between allowing experimentation and having stakes is interesting. I think limited rewinds ala Invisible Inc and Into the Breach work well but fit better into turn based games with hidden information.
idk if you read those comments so late after posting, but i had to write it somewhere: just watched the microsoft XO event and they announced a game called "Void Bastards" and boy, does this game remind me a lot of Heat signature. might be, that the creator of bio- and systemshock REALLY likes your game...
Thank goodness more games are more forgiving these days! I hate "Do It Again, Stupid" gameplay, and any time a game mitigates or avoids the frustration of it, people rejoice. It's even a talking point in a lot of reviews. Yet some games are stuck in the old ways, maybe the designers haven't thought of a way to get around it, maybe they are just risk-averse. Anyway, I find I'm much MORE likely to try my "desperate innovation" if the failure states are softer, cause I'm willing to explore the mechanics. I'm definitely picking up what you're putting down, keep thinking out loud and pushing game design forward, and thanks for the vid!
The concept of "Do It Again, Stupid!" can serve an important purpose, though. When a game forces you to repeat a segment it usually doesn't do it to punish you, but to make sure you have fully grasped the mechanics before moving on. Because if you haven't, you're most likely going to have a bad time later on when the challenge increases.
I've wanted to make a game where death isn't a fail state for a while now, I think it's interesting. I really liked Soul Reaver for that, death just sent you back to the spectral realm, you could find a point and return to the material realm ready to try again, without having to reload a checkpoint or something. Heat Sig is very much like that, tbf!
would you ever consider a gunpoint 2? the idea of it feels silly to write especially with the ideas you talked about in the video, like challenge and persistence/consistence of challenge, but gunpoint is a game I really really enjoy and I keep coming back to it every few months to replay it and all the levels I got from the steam workshop and I'd love to have more adventures with Richard Conway. regardless of whether or not it's something you'd ever do, much support and appreciation to you mr francis! hopefully this christmas I can get some money to get heat signature and explore what other games you have out there to offer :)
You should try Streets of Rogue, it's a top down-ish rogue-lite/open world-ish game about going up in a city, from the lowly slums all the way to uptown. The characters interact with each other in fun ways and there are tons of items, plus the fact that you can make your own character.
I think one reason that losing the daily challenge is not frustrating, is because the loss just makes you want to return the next day and try again. Losing motivates you, it doesn't feel like hitting a dead end.
Call of duty and other on rails shooters will always have issues with random difficulty spikes. Level difficulty is hard to balance and its impossible to make every encounter perfect. Since there's no way around and we just have to keep rolling the dice until we win. This makes me want to throw the controller at the screen in frustration. If i get through i know it's just luck. I don't feel an elation of victory ... more like a thank f*** that's over.
>more emergent than Xcom I was just thinking about this today. It's convenient that the "systems" in modern buildings (air conditioning, electricity, gas lines, plumbing) correspond to generic RPG magic system elements. I think that an Xcom with Gunpoint's and Heat Signature's sensibilities is more than enough to set the game apart from other tactics titles. But as to the main topic, I guess it's bizarre to me to hear that someone is frustrated by Super Meat Boy and finds roguelikes totally acceptable. I couldn't be more opposite. The randomization typical of roguelikes compounds my frustration because it's out of my control, whereas in something like Super Meat Boy or VVVVVV, I know exactly what I did wrong and the devs instantly put me back in a situation where I can execute it correctly. Restarting a roguelike from square one every time feels no different to me than the 80s games that had the same punitive mindset. With a checkpointed game, I'm only being set back appropriate to the skill I failed at. Games like Devil May Cry are great at having a low barrier to entry but nearly impossible ceiling. Consistent, scaling challenge like that is just as important in "waking up the game" in a Japanese-style brawler as it is a strategy game. The various moves are the toolkit and the enemy difficulty and the style system work in tandem to push you toward stringing together moves in interesting ways instead of rote button mashing.
Hello, sorry this isn’t about the video which I found extremely interesting but, I noticed that someone uploaded the making of gunpoint to RU-vid like two years ago and I’m not sure he got your approval even though he also uploaded it to the gunpoint subreddit and you are a moderator there, I thought if he didn’t get your approval you’d probably want to know that it was uploaded and want to remove it.
I strongly believe that challenge is essential to games, so I'd say yes. However, "failure" doesn't have to imply death or a big flashing GAME OVER screen. It can be as subtle as selecting the "wrong" dialogue option and pissing off an important character, given that your choice has lasting consequences (i.e. not the way Telltale does it).
Even if the game doesn't have an explicit failure state players can experience repeated frustrating failure. Puzzle games for instance. Maybe having feedback via explicit failures can help players to learn faster? Not sure.
No not at all. The argument that they do is only really brought up in an attempt to demote walking sims, not even because those who do that necessarily dislikes walking sims outright but because they're not used to games not having failure states and they feel they ought to draw a line in the sand. What these people overlook is the puzzle game genre. Now of course there are plenty of puzzle games that do have failure states, but failure states aren't necessary in puzzle design, only win states are. Take Portal for example, there is literally no way to die until test chamber 8 (or there about) but it was still a game up until that point. The only argument left here is that before you solve the puzzle, before you can progress, you are in a constant state of failure, but if that's the case then why don't we ascribe this standard of what counts as a failure state to all games, in particular walking sims? So, although I can't overstate the importance of failure states to gaming generally, I still think we ought to expand our minds to the possibilities of game design that subverts or does away with failure states completely. What if we had a game in which the consequences for a failure aren't so absolute, where they are nuanced enough that to call them fail states becomes kind of disingenuous? Failure states are to games what conflict is to story, a component of the medium that is so important and pervasive that many now think it's necessary, but these people ignore that some of the most celebrated works of fiction in the history of literature are not primarily motivated by conflict, and I think it could be a great avenue for innovation if some designers started thinking more about how to motivate player interaction, engagement and mastery without the carrot and stick of win and fail states
"The only argument left here is that before you solve the puzzle, before you can progress, you are in a constant state of failure, but if that's the case then why don't we ascribe this standard of what counts as a failure state to all games, in particular walking sims?" I wouldn't call it a constant state of failure, you are simply in the process of solving the puzzle. Failure only comes into play if you try something and it doesn't work. Pressing buttons in the wrong order, messing up a timed puzzle, losing an important item... There's plenty of ways to fail in puzzle games. Now, when it comes to walking sims, there are usually no obstacles to overcome and no choices to make. The only relevant decision a player can make is to stop moving. But at that point you might as well hit ESC. You see, the problem with Walking Sims is that they make no attempt to use the strenghts of the medium. Where is the benefit in removing mechanics and interaction from games? I just don't see it, despite having "played" a few Walking Sims in the past. I liked The Stanley Parable because it offered you plenty of choices and multiple endings. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter was pretty good as well because it gave you some detective work to do. But then again that makes these two much more reminiscent of traditional games than the rest of their genre. Maybe they aren't even Walking Sims. Who knows! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Eh I dunno. Loosing trained troops, gear, and money is a massive setback in Mount and Blade as progression is so slow. Anyone who has chosen to enable save-scumming is going to Load as soon as they are captured.
I love Mount and Blade. Progression is slow but slaughtering raiders with your massive (or medium) sized army is real fun. It's all I did when I was little.
