Gamer Grow

Believe it or not, but designing a True-Music game is incredibly difficult and complex. I have the full B.E.S. team working on developing small musical mechanics that can be layered into a game engine. One aspect of design that we've recently focused on is how playing music, particularly from memory, can be reverse engineered to expose and examine the associative elements of the learning process. In other words, by returning to what I sometimes refer to as the ultimate (videogame) "controller," the piano, and treating the action of playing music as a game mechanic, I can imagine how I learned to play piano like a game tutorial and apply the results accordingly. So what have I uncovered? I found out that I've memorized piano music as a series of muscle movements that are coupled with one another. The right hand is generally dominant in music because it usually caries the melody of a song. Because of this, my left hand takes cues from my right hand in order to figure ou...

Form fits function: The cornerstone design philosophy of all of Nintendo’s greatest games. However, for two of my favorite Zelda games, a new phrase must be coined about the relationship of form and function found within their core design. For the purposes of this essay, I will examine how “function creates form” in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and in its spiritual sister game The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. True to what has now become classic Zelda form, both Majora’s Mask and Phantom Hourglass share many of the same functions between them and all other Zelda games. The main character is a youthful, mute, sword wielding, adventurous tike who risks life and limb to overcome the challenges set against him and/or the world he currently occupies. When I say “function creates form” I am looking past these obvious similarities and zooming straight to the core gimmick of each game. The first thing that pops into any gamers head when Majora’s Mask is mentioned is probably Clock ...

It was in Melee, and we ignored. Now in Brawl, Sakurai has made it to where we can't ignore it any longer . Stale-Move Negation is when moves weaken in both damage and knock back when used in succession. How does it work exactly? Sakurai didn't want to get to technical on the Dojo, so it looks like we'll have to pick up the slack. I'll start with a few quick facts and then move into the real scientific/research/data portion. Moves weaken even after one use By using other moves the strength of moves can return Damage is calculated by fractions even though the damage is displayed as a whole number percentage As a general rule, an attack must hit an opponent and do damage to both weaken and sharpen Each input of an attack command counts as 1 hit towards sharpening Each throw, punching after grabbing, and successfully landed projectiles can both weaken and sharpen Multi hitting attacks only count as 1 hit, but the 1-2-3 neutral punch combo counts as 3 (because of the 3 sep...

As my Brawl week of impressions draws to a close, I wanted to talk about some of the things that I don't like about Brawl. Because the game is so good, and because most of the time when Sakurai puts his time into something it turns out amazing, what I displeases me about Brawl like skips right past the bad and lands somewhere among "the ugly." Items... oh no. Many say that items, including smash balls, were designed to be a "casual" gamers lucky dice roll that may turn the tides of a battle in their favor. I object to such a statement because I don't believe there is such a thing as casual game design. This topic is difficult to approach because of the many different ways casual and hardcore can be defined. I choose to clarify things by looking at the evolution of a gamer. We're all "casuals" to some game or genre at some point before becoming "hardcore." Though most gamers and "journalists" in the industry privilege the har...

The more I play Brawl the more I'm convinced that not only did Sakurai and team not attempt to balance Melee, but they didn't think we would take and use many of the implemented features and mechanics religiously. In my mind, I don't think they thought we would use L-canceling, short hopping, (and while we're at it) fast falling so aggressively. By relentlessly using these techniques characters like Fox, Falco, and even Gannondorf could pour pressure on their opponents with an unnatural amount of speed, power, versatility, and precision. I don't say unnatural because I think this style of play shouldn't have happened. I say unnatural because I just don't think any of the developers and play testers saw it coming, which means they didn't account for it. This time around, such things were accounted for. So much so, that I believe Brawl was balanced "to the short hop." In order to understand what I mean by this, I'd like to describe the check ...

This is how Brawl works so far in my mind. Without getting into what happens when moves directly interact, this map should show how the dynamics of position affect the flow of a Brawl battle. BRAWL BALANCE BOARD Just click your way around. And if you need to adjust the view, click and drag the white space. I provided a link to the Balance Board under the "[Insert Game Discourse] Here" section on the side bar. Playing games is all about understanding the rules and how those rules limit play. Because when there's limitation there can be moves, tactics, strategies, and gambits. Think about it!

As a critical gamer, the idea of customization in a game both excites me while also evoking a level of caution and concern. Being a stickler for gameplay, a high level of customization often degrades into distracting the player which is similar to "open-world" games. Both of these game features create an illusion of vast possibilities and individual expression. In the end, what's the point of customizing a army of RPG characters by changing their classes, swapping their armor, changing their accessories and weapons, when the battle strategy is essentially attack-attack-heal. Or worse, when you have to grind to get your level high enough regardless of all of your custom modifications. Did you really do anything? Or, what's the point of being a character plopped in the middle of a realistically scaled city when you spend more time traveling around in vehicles, goofing off by aggravating policemen and pedestrians, or simply getting lost in a world that doesn't provid...

Some are still unconvinced. For whatever reason, when they look at Brawl they can't help but count up all the things that have been removed to support the argument that Brawl is less deep or even dumbed down than its predecessor. As game designers, or people who think like designers, we know that it is not the number of features or options that can change a game significantly, but what function these features have in shaping how the game is played. A friend of mine submitted a list of commonly viewed elements that have supposedly been removed for the worse in Brawl. I would like to take this time to clarify how these options functioned in Melee, perhaps why they were removed from Brawl, and what Brawl has instead. That's right, I'm making a list too. No L-Canceling As I have said before, in Brawl air A attacks have the "l-cancel" built right into the moves. Not only is this better for online play, but for casuals and pros alike. The game inputs are less manic now,...

Brawl is already deeper than Melee, and there's nothing Melee can do about it. It seems hard to believe that in about a week I can come to this decision. But remember, because I've been following Brawls design paths for so long, it's as if I've been playing Brawl for months. For the most part the game plays and feels as lot like Melee, that is to say it's still smash. Right off the bat, Brawl is a lot cleaner. The clutter in Melee stemmed from from a high game speed, invincible frames, and other invisible aspects of the gameplay (like L-cancels). All of those areas have been addressed. Upon first seeing Brawl in motion, I thought the game speed was dramatically reduced. Now, though the air fall speed has been decreased making all the characters appear to be "floaty," the game speed is actually just as fast or (could it be) faster. Sakurai commented long before that Brawl has a new air game. And true to his word, the aerial battles and ballets are nothing s...

So what do I think of Brawl? After years of speculation, after writing hundreds of pages about the improvements that needed to be made from Melee, after making a list of my predictions, after studying hours of footage on youtube, what do I really think of this game now that I've finally gotten my hands on it. Well, I haven't played it for too long. I'm only fifty-three hours into Brawl and it's been five days since its release. Jokes aside, I've barely scratched the surface of this game. Though this phrase gets tossed around often, I assure you that I'm gauging my judgments based on how deep Melee is. After all, I haven't even played all the characters, levels, or modes yet. Needless to say the game is massive, and I am more than immensely pleased with Brawl. Playing Brawl puts me in a strange state. It feels like I've played the game before. After picking apart melee by writing hundreds of pages worth in articles delineating Sakurai's personal style...

Nobody wants to know who dies in their favorite story or what the twist is at the end of the summer blockbuster if they haven't gotten around to reading/watching it yet. Along the same lines, I've found that there are people who don't like to be told what to do in a game because they believe "figuring it out" is half the fun. This pet peeve for gamers goes as far as some players skipping tutorials, and snapping at those who offer advise (or at least ignoring them). Certainly in the majority of puzzle games "figuring it out" is all of the fun, and giving the player puzzle solutions destroys the gameplay experience for them. However, for all of the genres based on action, mechanics, and skill, being told how to do something still leaves the player with the challenging task of executing the action. Unlike other mediums, games sustain an interactive relationship with the player(s). Even the most simple games are quite complex when you think about it. Some ga...

These final few days before Brawl hits, I've been deep in thought devising the visual style for GuitaRPG. Unlike Neo*RPG where I ripped the majority of the sprites from a Geometry Wars clone on the PC, I plan on hand illustrating all the art (or at least getting some help doing the artwork). The process has been a slow one because I have to pick a style that I can easily produce a lot of images in, while also keeping in mind that the form of the objects in the game must serve their function. Even from what little conceptually I have thought through of GuitaRPG's core gameplay, I know I want to put a strong emphasis on color. Because the buttons on the Guitar Hero Guitar controller are color coded, I'll be adapting this color scheme to develope a universal color code that the game will follow. In order to accentuate this color code, I plan on illustrating GuitaRPG with solid shapes that create contrast with simple areas of black and white (and to a lesser extent grey and eve...

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a perfect example of a hyper clean game that is completely devoted and focused on two things. The first is the game's primary function. 1) Puzzles puzzles and more puzzles Everything is a puzzle; challenges, the town, your hotel room, paintings, inventions, scenarios, and the story. There is something curious about everything and it's your job to get to the bottom of it. Every character knows about, is concerned with, and gives away puzzles as a means of social exchange. Solving puzzles is the primary function of Professor Layton, but it goes beyond that. Solving puzzles is a vague mechanic at best, which, in the game, can involve everything from talking to specific characters, going to specific locations, arranging items in your hotel room, reassembling a painting from scraps, drawing lines, pointing out the culprit, to writing in words on the touch screen. The game oscillates between all these mechanics to keep things fresh. At the ...