ITT: Game Design

Post games that have good game design and why, post games that have bad game design and why, post what you love to see, post what you hate to see, etc.
Game devs are often critically ignorant of what you should and shouldn't do, often because there's barely any good, in-depth information on it. It's like developers deliberately don't tell anyone else how to make good games.

I'll start with Bloodborne, whoch I just recently was thinking about. People often attribute the use of shortcuts as a main factor in its design, but I think a more important component is the placement of enemies and the layout of the level, specifically in that nearly every encounter is deliberately and uniquely set up, with the environment being just varied enough to be memorable while still remaining tied to the theme of the area. This makes it much easier to remember each small component of the level, allowing the player to build a map in their head, since there is no map in the game. This encourages the player to find the fastest route "from bonfire to boss", which is where the shortcuts come in. It also makes the game stick in the player's head so much more, since it involves so much memorization and navigation.

Essentially the levels are memorable and interesting because each asset, enemy, and item was placed there for a reason, rather than haphazardly copied or scattered randomly.

another interesting thing to note is that while a lot of people like to call Dark Souls' and Bloodborne's levels full of connections between each other, they really aren't. If you look at the maps the levels are largely separate, with only 1-3 connections between the levels themselves. Most of the inter-connectivity is entirely within the levels, but this is good and not bad. Having too many ways to go and no main direction or constraints is a problem that plagues many open-world games, and often doesn't use the space given in an interesting way.

Well I don't know about Bloodborne, but DaSI has verticality in an interconnected and very well put together world.
From the lowest point in the map to the highest in less than 5 minutes.
Boom you've bypassed the Taurus Demon and the Drake. Alternatively
People praise the level design in this game because it seems very well put together and cohesive. Each major pre-Lordvessel area has at least two shortcuts you can run through to reach the boss or reach another area.>people like to call Dark Souls' and Bloodborne's levels full of connections between each other, they really aren't. If you look at the maps the levels are largely separate, with only 1-3 connections between the levels themselves

I agree, I was merely pointing out that it isn't a porous empty wasteland like skyrim, instead it's a deliberately crafted set of paths between certain areas.

I prefer wasteland to tight linear pathways.

Generally I don't think I have the insight necessary to tell what's good game design and what's not in most cases, but I'll give it a go with pic related.

Something interesting about the game to me is the way it handles QTEs. It's not just as simple as pressing a button when it tells you to as it is in every other game I've played - you have to draw the specific pattern for the required weapon before you can do the QTE, with the player being awarded more points for drawing a larger pattern. It introduces more interactivity and a bit of depth to what would otherwise be a pretty mundane activity, forcing players to decide whether they want to get it over with as quickly as possible and draw a small shape or if they want to get the best ranking possible and draw a larger shape, the latter of which incurs the risk of taking too long and failing.

Something that's a bit of a double edged sword is that you have to buy two skills that are pretty vital throughout the entire game, Unite Guts (which functions as a parry/block) and Unite Spring (a dodge). The fact that their prices are both noticeably lower than the rest of the skills indicates that they're going to be important, but I do wonder if the fact that you don't start off with them by default lead some who maybe weren't so familiar with the genre to ignore them until later on in the game, which would make the game even more difficult.

Another thing I liked about it is that, as far as I remember, there are no mechanics that are introduced as a one-off event and never used again. Every deviation from standard gameplay is used at least one more time with increased difficulty later on. The boxing mechanics introduced in the mid-game are used in the penultimate chapter against a considerably harder boss, the second shmup part throws a lot more enemies at you albeit with fewer obstacles to dodge, a part where you have to control your ship as it dodges obstacles is reintroduced later on and has you controlling two ships at once, and so on. There's a particularly interesting instance of this sort of thing early on. One part of an early chapter has you controlling an enemy ship's movements on the TV screen by moving about with characters normally on the Wii U controller's screen; you have to do this again not long after, only this time, you have to steer the ship on the TV screen in the same manner while also having to fight enemies on the Wii U controller's screen. It's very interesting and almost like playing two different games at once.

There are other things I love about this game, too. I've always loved 'rival' bosses like Vergil in DMC3, Dante/Credo in DMC4, Jeanne in the first Bayonetta or the Masked Lumen in the second, so getting to fight Prince Vorkken four times was a real treat for me, especially since he gets new moves of his own each time. It's always a nice way to test the player's skill, and it helps that his theme is so good.

Speaking of music, the last fight with Prince Vorkken, iirc, is the only bossfight in the game in which the track 'Tables Turn,' doesn't play as you're about to win the bossfight. Really makes the fight feel all the more climactic.

I could go on, but I'll end there for now. I love this game.

...

Good
Manages to feel like half between Metroidvania and Classicvania.

Bad
It is like Ken Levine placed a bunch of concept art and other ideas in a generic FPS maker, played what came out of it, said "WTF! This is too FUN and INTERESTING.", and threw it out the window.

Bloodborne's levels are more or less self-contained compared to Dark Souls, even though there's a lot of interconnectivity between them. Another example to would be Metroid Prime, every level has at best 3 or 4 connecting pathways to any other level.


"Linear" is a misnomer since they incorporate a lot of non-linear elements like branching pathways, optional areas and shortcuts, and I prefer existent design to nonexistent design.

Levels composed of simple repeating elements that form beautiful hypnotic patterns of black and white. Can be played as a bullet hell or a puzzle game.

Linear stages that allow experimentation in how to complete them. Multiple paths exist and can be "solved" in a number of ways. Has some very tense moments and a memorable "boss fight" where you need to disable a bunch of security measures so you can murder an increasingly nervous CEO

Monster Hunter has way too much stuff that would go well here so I'll just go on about the Hammer.
The hammer has a 3 hit combo. Smack, smack, golfswing. There's more to the weapon but that's all you need. The first two hits are shit but the golfswing does a lot of damage. The golf swing that makes up the third hit travels diagonally, like the backslash key on your keyboard. It hits low to the hunter's left, and high to the hunter's right. Since monsters come in different sizes their heads will rest in different places, and this is how you aim. If you're fighting a small monster you want to face it so that it's to your right, or your golf swing will go over it's head. If you're fighting a large monster you position yourself so that it's to your left, so it gets hit by the top of the swing. Whether your first two hits actually connect doesn't matter, because they're shit anyway.
There's more to it though. A sleeping monster takes 3x damage from a hit that wakes it up. If you want to wake a monster up with the hammer you don't want your first hit to get that bonus, so you face to the left a bit so that the first two hits miss. If a monster walks while attacking you can do the first two attacks in front of it, to smash it in the face with the golfswing as it comes into range. If you break it's face enough it'll get stunned, letting you pound on it's face even more.

All of this comes from the simplest attack of the simplest weapon. The Hammer might have very few combos but you have to put a lot of thought into the golfswing, and that's why I think it's great game design. A bad hammer player will try and get quick pounds off while dodging, while a good one will do the combo seemingly for no reason, then somehow the golfswing will smash the monster in the face for a massive amount of damage. it's a mix of prediction, timing and positioning which gives the Hammer such a high skill ceiling.
There's a youtube video of a guy getting a near perfect run against a Stygian Zinogre in 4/4U, in the frozen seaway. It's an amazing showcase on what this simple combo can do, but I can't find it because the title is in Japanese.

What's the first map from? It looks like it could be from a Doom engine game but I don't think any of those had such large and detailed maps, not in vanilla at least. Maybe Hexen or Strife.


I think PoR struck a better balance in its level design by having the portrait worlds be only somewhat linear and fairly large, while the castle you explore to find them is huge, and has lots of different paths.

I want to combine sim city 4, Civ 4 , and Hearts of iron 3:Black Ice mod & Europa Universalis

I want Civilization but with city builder gameplay because of my pictures.

civ 4 & Simcity 4 art style

Hearts of iron 3:Black Ice mod level of units that you can research but for every era not just for ww2 & not just for war technology.

I was actually thinking about how traveling from place to place isn't such a chore like in Harmony of Dissonance and it isn't super linear either. The combat has weight and survival was less about getting tired.

Still cramped as fuck, that's the main issue.

I prefer the less boring design.

This is important.

What did you think about the level design in the Forbidden Woods? Because that was the only are I was constantly getting lost in and never managed to build a map in my head for.

Has to be the strongest level in the game and one of the best forest levels I've seen
Shouldn't have been, with how many unique areas and landmarks there are

I had the same issue. Eventually after going through it twice and collecting EVERYTHING because completionist I kind of sort of had an idea of where I was going, but it was never concrete.


It definitely did, but holy shit they did a really good job with all the interconnectivity between them and it always ended up turning me around in some spots. Like the jump you can make to the gravewarden's set from the first ledge lets you skip a HUGE part of the level and I did that so often, went the opposite way up the path out of curiosity, and had no fucking idea where I was going because it all looked so different from the other way around.

Definitely nailed that forest level design right down to the psychological impact on the player, top notch Fromsoft quality and something we saw absolutely none of in DaS3.

Dying Light has some interesting design choices:


So you're taught: loud noises draw zombies. Loud noises like gunfire. So while you do get access to guns and a fairly steady stream of ammunition guns have a massive drawback, and melee is still very worth using, guns are the 'Fuck it, this needs to die now!' weapon.

One of the things the game teaches you, before any actual parkour, is piles of blue bin-bags are a safe thing to jump onto. Nothing else in the game uses this shade of blue (except a car or two I think?) so it's very easy to pick out this safe landing spot if you're looking off the top of somewhere high.

I hated the combat, and ended up just avoiding zombies and running around everywhere. (Note this, it's relevant to the next greentext) After a while (and some forced fights) you get the hang of the combat and start getting skills and weapons to kill zombies.
Even with guns it can be easy to get overrun by the hoard, so what's one of the first usable throwable/deployable weapons you get? Firecrackers to distract them (they shamble over to them)

So you spend time avoiding zombies. How do you do that? Parkour. You get good at evading and running and generally not wasting your time killing the zombies, especially not big groups of them. Most of the zombies are dawn-of-the-dead style but there's the odd 28-days-later/left 4 dead style one that can (to an extent) parkour after you which you can either just ditch by outrunning them, or stop and fight them after luring them to the top of a building where you won't get bothered by other infected.
This means by the time you're introduced to the nighttime parkour (and the very dangerous 'volatiles') you know how to run. Because fighting them head-on is suicide when you first meet them and even with good melee weapons and/or guns it's still very dangerous. They can parkour like the fast zombies that chased you down in the daytime, so you already have practice in dealing with them.

The game isn't perfect; the plot is toe-curlingly stupid, Troy Baker is the VA, the plot is cringing, but the way it taught you how to play the game without being a nose-leading tutorial (or at least, as nose-leading as it could have been) left me very, very impressed. I miss the movement and mobility I had in the game when I play other first person games.

Its DOOM

The Frog Suit in Mario 3 hugely improved the old underwater controls, which are often criticized for being awkward. With that in mind, why didn't they just make those controls the default, instead of a powerup? It's possible they created the powerup after finishing most of the levels with water in them, and they wouldn't want to go back and redesign them. But come Super Mario World, they dropped the Frog Suit controls like a live grenade and never looked back. It's baffling that they would make a near-objective improvement and then just forget about it.

Imagine if they kept those controls, and continued to improve gradually on them. Other sidescrollers would follow suit with their underwater controls, since you know people love to copy Mario. We could've had good underwater controls become the standard, at least for 2D games. Fluid and speedy, not slow and awkward.

Mario isn't even the only series guilty of decisions like this. Majora's Mask made 3D swimming fun too with the Zora's mask, but OF COURSE, it has to be limited to a certain item in a certain game.

bump

What a pain.