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Why Everyone Should Participate in the Global Game Jam

kevinjameswong.com

A picture of my team from my first Global Game Jam.

The sixth 48-hour Global Game Jam starts January 24th, and I can’t be more excited for it. I treasure the memories of the panic and the productivity, the initial minutes of confusion as we stumbled around trying to come up with an idea around the theme, and the exciting escalation as the mist cleared and our game idea came into being. The empowering feeling of making something with nary a clue what I was doing, and the electrifying flow of caffeine through my veins.

My team from my first Global Game Jam.

I remember jamming with Xander and Bard, the looks of the other developers at Citizen Space as they peered over at us every time a zombie screeched and the day we exhibited our game at Mr. Grant’s AP Comp Sci class. I remember that weekend with Catherine and Esteban, as we munched on thin-crust pizza and wrote Processing code, surrounded by LA’s most renowned indies. And those magic hours in the early morning, as we giggled like sleep-deprived schoolchildren at silly Italian Spiderman puns and our game evolved from The World’s Heartbeat to Unhearted, culminating in a delightful surprise we left just for our judges.

So, yes, I’m getting a bit sentimental over my Global Game Jam memories, but I’ve good reason to do so: the Global Game Jam is a magical weekend filled with delightful stress and love. For an aspiring game developer, there’s no better place to gain loads of experience and have a great time doing so. Here are nine reasons why it is the best non-professional gaming event of the year.

1. It is fun.

Play is an act of volition undertaken for its inherent value to the individual, whereas work is a compulsory act undertaken for an external motive. Creation can be either, but both academia and the industry tend to privilege the latter due to professional obligations. Game jams exist purely to serve the former: game jamming is playful. 

An image of Ouroboros was the theme for 2012′s Global Game Jam

The joy of making stuff is diminished when it is done out of a compulsive need to answer to an authority or meet demands. Participation in the Global Game Jam is voluntary, and you are free to make whatever you want without having to answer to requirements handed down from some disconnected arbitrator. At the Global Game Jam, you are free to create games simply because you want to, playing with tools and methodologies, rather than working with them. Given how structured and hierarchical media-making usually is, there’s not quite a better place for playful, subversive game-making.

2. A safe space to make crappy/weird games. 

It is said that academia and indie development is a safe-haven for goofy and experimental games. This is not entirely true. Expectations of quality and polish inherent to classroom settings privilege projects that aspire to fulfill existing notions of “good” game design, leaving “intentionally bad” games without a place in traditional game design classes. Indie developers outside of the fringe still call their line of work a “job”, and thus must fulfill consumer expectations of polish and playability in order to be commercially viable for distribution on networks like Steam. Given the expectations of those settings, there is little room there for “crappy” games. What space then is there for the interactive joke? The Twine-based acid trip? The plastic-guitar controlled shmup?

Surgeon Simulator 2013

Surgeon Simulator 2013

The Global Game Jam is the exact place for such goofy, playful experimentation, there is no more welcoming space for people to make weird things. Where else would you get delightfully-meta project simulators, introspective games about relationships, or interactive jokes about butterfingered surgeons? Surgeon Simulator 2013 took off incredibly last year, selling thousands of copies and getting more positive media attention than games like Crysis 3 and God of War: Ascension, and it would have never been crafted without the silly and playful atmosphere of a game jam.

3. Make new friends and bond with existing ones. 

Collaboration is a special kind of relationship. It requires one to assert exactly enough of their ego to invest themselves in a project and realize a strong vision, but it also demands that one reel back and allow others to express themselves through your idea by modify, tweaking, and editing it. A collaborative relationship is not an unilateral one, with one individual dictatorially demanding his collaborators to surrender their dreams and individuality to realize his vision, but rather a multilateral dance between equally expressive minds. Each participant in this dance swerves back and forth, gently pushing their ideas forth while gracefully gliding back to let others do the same.

Collaboration at its best is fuel for true friendships. I loved my board games class last semester not just because of the excellent lecturer, but also because of the project-based structure of the class. A new game was due practically every week, and groups were assigned randomly. The high-pressure environment of the class and the free flowing, improvisational nature of the projects fostered a collaborative relationship with my classmates, and I probably made more friends in that class than I have in any other non-games class.

The Global Game Jam promotes precisely this kind of mutuality. If the sappy reminiscing above tells you anything, its that those 48 hours made me close friends with the people I chose to jam with. Collaboration is not always so perfect, some may overzealously assert their vision while others might panic under the pressure, but the shared experience of watching something awesome unfold out of your combined doing is deep and moving.

4. No prerequisite knowledge.

There’s this unfortunate stigma surrounding game development that intimidates a lot of newcomers away from it. A narrative exists that game-making rewards only the best autodidacts, that the only way one can get experience in making games is by making games, leaving many people lost and confused as to where to start. Some may join indie or student projects, but given that hierarchical structures and standards of quality still exist with those groups, its easy for newbies to feel lost and confused when trying to participate in those teams. That’s assuming that those groups welcome newbies at all, the student projects I’ve seen at USC have become increasingly competitive and exclusive, demanding too much from confused beginners simply looking for stable ground to grow from.

At the Global Game Jam, the only barriers to entry are mental. If you know Photoshop, then you’re the artist. Know how to use Audacity? Sound designer. Basic familiarity with C#? Programmer. Its easy to feel intimidated in the face of such responsibility, but the feeling of agency over how you want to do things is empowering, and that courage and confidence will carry you far further than any mentor can.

5. Learn new skills. 

This is a big one. The Global Game Jam is not a competition, but rather a social gathering where people come together to make games, everyone wants each other to succeed. There will be numerous experienced developers there, and the communal nature of the event encourages people to share ideas and teach tools and skill to each other. The diversity of the people who come out to these events guarantees that you’ll be able to find at least someone to teach you the secrets of any given tool, be it Photoshop, Game Maker, Unity, or XNA. Collaborate with at least one very experienced jammer, and you’ll come out a far better game developer than you were before participating. For an aspiring game designer, there’s no better place to make your first game.

The 48 hour time limit helps too. In any other setting, it is easy to slack off after watching tutorials and not put anything you learned to practice, making autodidacticsm basically useless. The expectation for one to complete a game by the end of the weekend forces new jammers to put what they learned into practice immediately, and thus, inexperienced jammers learn important skills here faster than anywhere else.

6. Perform under pressure. 

Orson Welles said that “the enemy of art is the absence of limitations”, and in my experience, this is true. Limitations and conditions force me to think creatively to overcome challenges. Reality Ends Here‘s card-based prompt system and refusal to provide equipment exists to create these interesting limitations, and has caused its players to generate a wealth of fantastic work.

When that digital gun goes off at 5 PM that evening, the first thing you’d probably feel is panic. Don’t. The 48 hour time limit serves to promote creativity, and a well-scoped, well-thought idea, executed well will come to fruition by the end of the time limit. Learning to work well under pressure will make you a better creator. You’ll face similar pressure everywhere in life, a game jam shouldn’t be anything different.

7. Overcome your fears. 

Starting off a new game project is an intimidating process, one look at that blank programming slate and imagining how it will evolve into a full-fledged game is scary, and collaborating with others brings its own set of challenges. Am I good enough to participate in this jam? Will I drag my team back with my relative inexperience? Will my team think I’m incompetent? Am I even capable of making games? Maybe I should come back next year when I’m more ready. These mental barriers are enough to dissuade a beginner from making games, and the repetition of these excuses is enough to kill a great career at its birth. 

There is only one kind of fear: the fear of the unknown, pretty much anything else is imaginary. It might take a lot to step up and take the plunge, but the relief of seeing those fears dispelled is incredibly empowering. If anything, you’ll prove to yourself that you are fully capable of making games. Internalizing that notion can change the direction of your career entirely, and that courage and initiative will take you far.

8. Being part of something great.

The Global Game Jam is the largest single game creation event on Earth, generating over three-thousand games over the course of two days. It set Guinness World Records for largest game jam for the last two years, and looks to do so again this year. Simply by registering for the jam and coming out to the jam site, eager and intent to make a game, you’ll be counted amongst those 13,000 developers who have come together to participate in this incredible event. How many other opportunities to set world records does life throw at you? Passing up participation in the Global Game Jam will just be a missed opportunity.

9. Make a game. 

By the end of the Global Game Jam, you will have made a game. You would have accomplished what most of society can’t. There are so many people out there who wish they could make games, but don’t. Just by participating in the Global Game Jam for its entire duration, you would have done what many people only wish they could. The fear of failure is too paralyzing for most people to endure, and by participating in the Global Game Jam, you would have transcended that fear. The vast infiniteness of the unknown demands pioneers unfazed by questions of success or failure, and by taking those brave steps into it, you would have done for the world a great service. Now that you have completed one small game, what’s going to stop you from doing so again, and again, and again?

Unhearted was coded with only loose understanding of Processing.

Paper prototyping

Citizen Space, the venue for my first Global Game Jam

kevinjameswong.com

I Made A Game With My 5 Year Old Son

hufkens.net

One Sunday I made a game together with my son. Robbe is 5 years old and he grew up watching his dad building games for kids. He was always very interested and happy to test my apps, and recently he discovered the wonderful world of Mario while playing Super Mario 3D World and Mario Cart on the Wii U. 

I  love the creativity of children, and I wanted to do something with it. I just came back from a inspiring CoderDojo where I helped a 12 year old boy recreate Flappy Bird. The next morning, Robbe drew lots of birds in different colours and  explained what they all could do. He was never very enthusiastic about drawing, but recently he started creating all sorts of stuff. So I proposed the idea of making a game with his birds, and he was totally up for it. I put him to work to create more assets for the game, and made him responsible for the gameplay and design.

A game with birds (not a Flappy Bird clone this time), bombs, stars and coins. The bird has to collect all the coins (mmm, where did he get that idea from). If you catch a coloured star the bird changes colour and morphs into another bird. If you fly against a bomb, the bird falls and it’s game over. That was the basic idea, and we worked that out during the Sunday afternoon.

The game is called ‘Vogeltje Vlieg’ or ‘Birdie Fly’ and here’s a  video of the first version:

The time I spent building the game was not interesting to him, so I needed a tool which could produce something fast. I used Cocos2D before and they just released V3 and SpriteBuilder which is an awesome game editor. So that seemed like a perfect match, and a good excuse to test it out.

I scanned all the game assets and cut them out quickly using my superb Photoshop skills. Then I created a first level in SpriteBuilder. I used CocosBuilder before when building Wee Subs and Wee Rockets, but the tool has improved a lot since then. I had a working prototype in a couple of hours because I could drag and drop the sprites to the scene and I only needed to write a little but of code for game logic. Later that week I added the animations and effects.

It’s really fun to create something with children, especially your own kids. They have great ideas that can make no sense, but are very original. We created something and I hope to do this again. Maybe one of our experiments will become a real game someday. Who knows, but the most important part is that you just keep on playing with technology and new stuff. I love Apple’s Sprite Kit 2D game engine, but having a tool like SpriteBuilder makes such a big difference. I thought Cocos2D was dead, but boy was I wrong.

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hufkens.net

How to Make a No. 1 App With $99 and Three Hours of Work | Game|Life | Wired.com

wired.com

Image: WIRED

You don’t need to be a programmer to break into the App Store’s top charts. All you need is 100 bucks and a free afternoon.

You’ll need a halfway decent idea, of course, but once you’ve got that nailed down, you can easily buy the source code, get an online tutorial on how to use it and within hours have a game ready to play. That explains why 95 of the 300 or so new apps released on Apple’s iTunes store one day last week were riffs on Flappy Bird, the mega-hit its creator pulled at the height of its popularity. There’s Flappy Wings, Splashy Fish, even Crappy Bird.

For some reason, a surprising number of these apps, like Flying Cyrus, Cyrus Flyer and Jumping Miley, feature the disembodied head of pop star Miley Cyrus. One of the most downloaded of this unlikely sub-genre is Flappy Miley Wrecking Ball Pro, created by Gregory Storm. He uploaded the game on February 12, just two days after Flappy Bird flew the coop. Never mind that he’d only heard of Flappy Bird the week before. “I had no idea what a Flappy Bird was,” Storm said. “Never played it. Hadn’t seen it.”

So how was he able to create Flappy Miley so quickly? Easy: He bought everything he needed.

The first step was purchasing the source code to Flappy Crocodile.

On sites like Chupamobile, billed as “a stock photo agency, but for app development,” programmers can sell their app’s source code to others. This is hardly a new idea in the videogame business, but just as the democratization of development has allowed people to create games with small budgets and sell them at low prices, so too has it created a market where middleware mavens can sell source code to would-be developers for next to nothing.

Want to clone Bejeweled? The rights to the source code are just a few clicks away.

You need an app for your restaurant? Chupamobile has templates for $50 each. Want to create a match-three game like Bejeweled? A clone of Tiny Wings? The rights to the source code are just a few clicks and a few bucks away. Just $99 gets you an open-ended, royalty-free license to use the Flappy Crocodile code to create a single app and sell it in perpetuity. Even if you make a million bucks, you don’t owe another cent to the guy who did the heavy lifting.

In the case of Flappy Crocodile, that guy is Vojtech Svarc, a 26-year-old app developer from the Czech Republic. He’s spent the past six years jumping from one online business to another: website scripting, e-books, Google AdSense and practically everything else. Svarc got into the app business about a year ago, but quickly realized that investing large amounts of cash into a single app and hoping it would be discovered among the 1 million or so already on the App Store might not be the best use of his time. Then he thought, what if building an app could be more like building a website?

“When building a website, there is no need to start from scratch as there [are] plenty of templates out there to choose from,” Svarc said. “Using templates cuts the cost and time down, and it allows you to get your products out there quickly.”

Svarc watched the App Store and noticed that any time an app made waves, similar apps would be buoyed to the top. Speed, he thought, was key to taking advantage of that. App templates would allow developers to build trendy apps in no time. “When I saw the media attention Flappy Bird was getting,” Svarc said, “I knew this [was] a ride I need to be on.”

So far, he says, about 100 developers have paid him $100 each to use Flappy Crocodile. Svarc says Tiny Flying Drizzy, which was the No. 1 free game on the App Store earlier this week, is based on his engine.

Anyone with a C-note and ten seconds can license the source code to a videogame. But what do you do then? Don’t you need programming skills to actually modify the code?

Nope. You don’t need any special skills at all. To prove it, I bought a license to use Flappy Crocodile.

Flappy Ryan making solid progress after a few minutes’ work. Screengrab: WIRED

I’ve worked on a mobile game before, but I’m a terrible programmer. Still, I could see that my $100 had bought me a complete package: Svarc had included every asset, function and plugin you’d need to publish and sell a Flappy Bird clone. It also included a voucher for an online course, led by Svarc and app developer Yohann Taieb, that walks you through the process of creating your first app. It covers everything from registering for an Apple developer license to reskinning the graphics and adding in-game advertising to uploading your finished product.

I had a little trouble setting things up properly at first because of how I’d set up the open-source game engine Cocos2d while developing my own apps. With a little adjustment I had Flappy Crocodile running smoothly in Xcode, Apple’s iOS development software.

With minimal effort and zero coding required, I could now start replacing any of the game’s art or sound with my own files. A drag and a drop later, Flappy Crocodile’s cheery background song became “Type of Way” by Rich Homie Quan.

Then I found the folder containing the files for animating the crocodile. I opened up Photo Booth and snapped a selfie, cut out my head using Photoshop, then replaced the crocodile sprite with my face. I compiled the new code, feeling more than a little surprised when the iPhone simulator launched successfully, allowing me to direct my own head through a gauntlet of pipes. In less than an hour, I’d changed Flappy Crocodile into Flappy Ryan.

Gregory Storm put more spit and polish into his clone than I did.

“My wife knew an awesome animator named Reinaldo Rocha,” he said, “and he was able to get us preliminary sketches within an hour.” Storm swapped in Rocha’s drawings of Cyrus, which featured flapping ears and a tongue that is forever sticking out.

Now I can buy a standardized solution for the price of a pizza.

He made several other tweaks before submitting the game to the App Store, all of them minor: The static background image is different, and all the sound effects have been changed. Otherwise, everything from the menus to the pipes are straight from the source code. Some app templates require users to “re-skin” everything, from the graphics to the music to the sound effects, before they upload the app. Flappy Crocodile‘s license agreement has no such restrictions.

Assembling an app using inexpensive source code and zero knowledge of programming is limited to simple app games today, but it won’t be long before you can use the same trick to build more elaborate games. There’s already a similar sharing economy where developers use the low-cost game development engine Unity. And anyone can buy complex elements of game design like artificially intelligent enemies. Buy the code, slap it into your game, and you’re done.

“Things like rendering a silhouette when the player moves behind an obstacle, or handling palette swapping characters, used to be done on a game-by-game basis. Now I can buy a standardized solution for the price of a pizza,” game developer Mike Bithell said in a blog post on the Unity website.

It takes significantly more effort to create a high-quality game in Unity than it does to whip out a Flappy Bird clone, but we’re reaching the point where non-coders will be able to make increasingly complex games and throw in snazzy features as easily as ordering an extra large with pepperoni. More and more popular indie and mobile games have begun using Unity in recent years — République, Plague Inc. and Rust, to name just a few — and this is one of the reasons.

The widespread availability of source code and templates is just putting small developers on par with big players in the app market, says Storm. Big Fish Games, he notes, has published more than 100 hidden object games on the App Store.

“I highly doubt they build from scratch for every new title,” Storm says. “They aren’t trying to be original and recreate the wheel. They’re trying to maximize their proven formulas and repeat them by re-skinning and using the same source code over and over.”

Creating such games, he says, is like appearing on the cooking competition show Chopped. “Everybody has the same basket full of odd ingredients and you have a short time to make something tasty with them or you’ll lose out,” Storm says. “It’s my job to take the same source code that everybody else has been given and spice it up.”

Still, with so much competition it isn’t easy for a guy like Storm to make a killing. With all of his costs — buying the art, hiring a freelance programmer to help with updates, etc. — he says he’s spent about $2,500 creating Flappy Miley. If it sticks around — say, if Miley Cyrus twerks her way back into the news — Storm could rake it in. But in the volatile app marketplace, that’s a big “if.”

“At this point we’ve just about made our money back,” Storm says, “so it looks like a fun night at the Olive Garden is in our future.”

Ryan Rigney is a regular contributor to Game|Life and the designer of Orb Combat Simulator 2019, now on iTunes. His book, “Buttonless,” is available on Amazon.

Read more by Ryan Rigney

Follow @rkrigney on Twitter.

wired.com

Behind Tiny Dangerous Dungeons – Jussi Simpanen Interview | Stencyling Around

blog.stencyl.com

Jussi Simpanen, perhaps better known as Adventure Islands, recently won the thirteenth Stencyl Jam with his Game Boy styled metroidvania platformer, Tiny Dangerous Dungeons. Jussi was kind enough to sit down and have an instant-messenger interview about his game and game development in general.

Cory: For those not familiar with you, who are you?

Jussi: I’m a Finnish graphic artist and indie game dev.

Cory: So, how did you discover Stencyl?

Jussi: Couple of years ago I was participating in small Game Dev Club in Finland’s capital Helsinki, where one of the group leaders asked if anyone had heard of Stencyl before, then he introduced us to it. I saw your game The Binding Force⁰ and got very inspired to learn how to use Stencyl and make my own pixel art games.

0. The Binding Force: A metroidvania platformer that was in development by Cory Martin. A demo for it was released in 2011.

Cory: Haha, whoa. I’m glad my game kind of inspired you, or at least didn’t turn you off to Stencyl.

Jussi: It has great graphics, music and sounds. It’s still unfinished, yes? You should go back and finish it at some point. The first area where you get the sword inspired the original Dangerous Dungeons, Timmy was supposed to have ability to throw knives too, but for various reasons it only came to be in Tiny Dangerous Dungeons, two years later.

1. Dangerous Dungeons: A level-based platformer made by Jussi in 2011. It was his first game.

Cory: Yeah, it’s unfinished. If I don’t go back to it, I’ll likely make a game that borrows a lot of the same elements anyway.

Speaking of Tiny Dangerous Dungeons, what’s it all about?

Jussi: It’s somewhere between a sequel and spin-off title of my very first Stencyl game, Dangerous Dungeons, I made years ago. Whoa now I feel old. Anyway, unlike the original that progressed from level to level, this game is a metroidvania¹ adventure, where you can move around freely and find hidden treasures that grant you new abilities like ability to throw knives, something that was supposed to be in original Dangerous Dungeons too, but I had to cut it out because back then I had no idea how to make it properly. The game uses Game Boy style color palette, because I had originally started to make the game for Game Boy Jam, but ran out of time to finish it. However, Stencyl Jam was still going on and I decided to aim to finish the game for that instead. Total development time was about two weeks.

2. Metroidvania: A genre of sidescrolling platformers that have an emphasis on exploration and ability/item upgrades.

Cory: Was the original Dangerous Dungeons going to be a metroidvania?

Jussi: At first, yes, I had some finished graphics for ability to swim and throwing knives, but I was still learning how to use Stencyl and lot of functions were a complete mystery to me, so I decided to keep the gameplay simple. You move from one level to next, trying to get a key that opens a locked stage goal door in every room. I’m still trying to decide if possible future Dangerous Dungeons 2 should steer more to stage progression like original or metroidvania style gameplay like Tiny Dangerous Dungeons.

Cory: I’d say both gameplay concepts can be done almost equally as well, so I guess that’s something you’ll really have to ponder.

Jussi: I really liked the scrolling hidden levels of the original, and level designing for Tiny Dangerous Dungeons was fun, so if the sequel isn’t a metroidvania, I think it could be like DuckTales³ on NES, with free movement between areas.

3. DuckTales: An action-adventure platformer released by Capcom in 1989 for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Cory: Yeah, I felt that the hidden levels in Dangerous Dungeons were the best part of the game.

Jussi: Yeah, I like adventuring and exploring various areas in games and finding hidden secrets. Dangerous Dungeons were always supposed to be about exploring huge and complex dungeons.

Cory: I felt like the level design in Tiny Dangerous Dungeons was really well done, especially given the short development time and the limited number of in-game obstacles you had to work with. It almost always felt fresh and never redundant. How did the level creation process go?

Jussi: It went surprisingly well, at first I was worried I didn’t have enough tiles to work with, but in the end I like how the rooms turned out, each one feels unique. I have gotten pretty good at working with limited resources. It forces me to get creative.

Cory: What’s your process like, as far as planning and laying out the levels?

Jussi: In Tiny Dangerous Dungeons’s case I had first drawn the overall layout of the dungeon on a regular piece of paper, with lines showing where every door takes and I had marked where every item is hidden. I didn’t have exact plans how the actual rooms would look like, but I had marked the major puzzles locations, and build the levels in Stencyl around them. For example, the hallway that takes you to the Power Glove has pushable blocks on your way you can’t move yet, but when you get the glove and have to backtrack, this time you can’t go through the hall quite the same way as before, but have to push the blocks around to make yourself a new route. In a way, it’s kind of like two different levels in one.

Cory: I get the sense that you were consciously trying not to make one part of a scene feel like another part as far as gameplay and the placement of obstacles goes, and you seem to have pulled it off very well, especially considering this is a metroidvania.

Jussi: Yeah I tried my hardest to avoid repeating puzzles and object placements. I have very low tolerance for repetition in games so I tried to make every room feel clearly different. This was my first time making a metroidvania style game and I’m very content how it turned out. Repetition is one of the reasons I don’t like AAA games much these days. Too much copy paste in environments and characters.

Cory: I think it’s something I’m guilty of myself. Level design really is a craft of its own. Like, I think everyone thinks they can design levels. Like, yeah, you can place tiles and enemies and stuff, but making actual good levels—where each section serves a purpose and feels unique—is the hard part.

Jussi: Yeah, these days I’m trying to make the levels as unique as I can, with every tile and block placed with care. I’ve improved a lot in level designing during these years, even if some of my friends say my best levels were in original Dangerous Dungeons. I always try to avoid things like unfair jumps. For example, you are almost never required to jump and fall down while unable to see what’s underneath you. But in case you have to, there is never anything harmful beneath. Old Megaman games very guilty of hiding insta-kill spikes in unseen locations and it always pissed me off.

Cory: It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot, actually. I mean, I’ve been making games for years, but I’m just now finally deeply considering what goes into making a good level. Any game developers out there reading this should definitely consider it if you haven’t. It’s important.

Jussi: Every game is a learning experience, every one of my games have taught me lots of new things I didn’t consider before.

Cory: May I read you an excerpt from the review I wrote for Tiny Dangerous Dungeons while judging Stencyl Jam #13?

Jussi: Yeah, sure

Cory: Anyone reading who hasn’t played through the game, I recommend doing so, because I’m about to post a mega-spoiler.

“When I started walking on water, for some reason I experienced an incredibly strange feeling that seemed like a mixture of happiness, disbelief, fear and shock.” How does that make you feel?

Jussi: It’s interesting to hear you feel that way. Reminds me how one of my friends said how the same thing made them feel… powerful.

Cory: Yes, precisely.

Jussi: One of the major obstacles in the game suddenly becomes harmless. It’s amazing and one of the reasons I like metroidvanias so much. You start as a weakling, but slowly becoming more and more skilled and powerful.

Cory: Yes, that’s the essence of a metroidvania, but I honestly don’t think I’ve ever felt it done so well, I mean, I haven’t played a ton of metroidvanias, but you start out almost useless here, not being able to kill enemies, and a while into the game you finally find way to deal with them and you feel much more powerful, but you still have to worry about falling into the water, and much later in the game you get the ability to walk on water, and the second I hit the water, all these emotions rushed into my head, like, “Oh my god, is this real? Am I really walking on water? Am I safe? Whoa! I’m unstoppable!” And I think the fact that you’re walking on the water is perfect. You’re not swimming; you’re walking. You’re that powerful.

Jussi: Haha. Actually I had originally planned to include actual swimming to the game. But turns out I couldn’t create it in any smart way and without code, so I decided to borrow the “swimming” from Persist⁴, which was essentially walking on water. Except this time I gave the water much bigger collision box, so it really does look like you are actually walking on water now.

4. Persist: A sidescrolling game by Jussi in which you gradually lose your body parts and the abilities associated with them. Made in April 2013 for the two day long Ludum Dare 26 competition.

Cory: It’s a happy accident.

Jussi: It looked so good in the first test room I created where I tested all the tools and I was really happy how it turned out.

Cory: I think I saw you tweet that someone complained about the difficulty in Tiny Dangerous Dungeons. By and large I see it as being a pretty fair game, I mean, I think the boss is a giant pain, but most of the game feels totally fair. How did you approach and balance the difficulty this time around?

Jussi: I don’t think the game would have turned out anywhere as good as it did if I had not had my good friend Constantin Graf playtest the thing for me. Game design is complicated and especially metroidvanias require lots and lots of testing to make sure everything is working correctly. When working solo like I usually do, it’s very important to have people test your game. I got lots of important feedback about puzzles, enemies and etc from my family and friends. Remember folks, always have other people playtest your game, as the developer you can get easily blind to your mistakes.

Cory: Absolutely. And as the game’s developer, you’re going to be better at the game than pretty much everyone else, so it’s hard to accurately gauge how difficult something is by playing it yourself. Did you watch your testers play the game, or did they just relay feedback to you?

Jussi: One of the reasons original Dangerous Dungeons is so difficult, especially the boss fights, is because I didn’t have enough people test the thing, and those who did like my little brother, loved the extreme difficulty. When my folks are testing, I can just sit next to them and watch them play, my friends play through the game and then write me a memo about all the issues they find.

Cory: I think I was actually going to interview you a couple years ago when you released the original, but I just couldn’t beat that last level and I insisted on finishing every game I interviewed someone about. Haha.

Jussi: The final level of original is insanely hard, after finishing my 10th game Duke Dashington I decided to stream a playthrough of original DD and the final level took me by surprise. Back then I had the mentality “if I can beat it, anyone else can too!”. Needless to say, that is a very bad philosophy to design games on. Or perhaps it isn’t so needless, as it’s a very common rookie mistake. if I ever end up remaking the game I’ll be making the bosses bit easier, or making the bosses slow down a tiny bit to a certain cap every time you lose to them.

Cory: How long did you spend on the final boss in Tiny Dangerous Dungeons?

Jussi: It took a half a day to draw the boss graphics and program the movement and attack pattern. Originally he was supposed to just move back and forth sideways, and lunge down every time you were directly underneath him, but decided to go with much simpler approach that combines both, and made him just move diagonally and bounce off when ever he hits something.

Cory: As much as I enjoyed the game, I did feel that the boss was kind of a weak point.

Jussi: Agreed, it was perhaps a bit too much of a rush job and didn’t receive enough testing. The game has no story so there isn’t much of an ending for beating it either.

Cory: Every boss I’ve ever made has been a rush job. They’re always done very close to a competition deadline, usually on the final day, and sometimes in the final few hours. Even Team Meat⁵ admits that their bosses were rushed in Super Meat Boy⁶, and a lot of people felt they were kind of a weak point. Perhaps a good moral is to plan ahead and set aside a good amount of time to work on your bosses if you can.

5. Team Meat: An independent game development duo composed of Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes.
6. Super Meat Boy: An incredibly successful level-based platformer released by Team Meat in 2010.

Jussi: I suppose bit of a same thing happened in case of Tiny Dangerous Dungeons. Time was running but final challenge had to be done. I didn’t have the boss tested thoroughly enough and it hurt the overall game, lessons learned. I’ve gotten some messages and reviews that have said there should have been another save point next to the boss door. Not a bad idea. I’ll aim for better boss balancing from now on.

Cory: Fortunately, there are a couple health upgrades hidden in the dungeon that make the boss a little easier. The health upgrades are the only hidden items in the game, at least that we know of. Why’d you decide to hide ‘em?

Jussi: It serves as little extra reason to explore around and I wanted the players to earn them. I was originally planning there to be 3 actual treasures hidden away, but because they didn’t affect anything I never even started to implement them. They could have perhaps affected the ending in some way, if there was one.

Cory: I think the health upgrades were fun to find, so it was a solid decision.

Jussi: There was originally going to be at least one more tool too, a necklace that would give you ability to walk through dark, poisonous waterfalls. But I felt it was bit too forced obstacle and couldn’t come up with any better use for it quick enough, so I cut it out as well. Perhaps I bring it back if I end up making another metroidvania at some point.

Cory: Let’s shift gears over to the music. Who’s responsible for it?

Jussi: I asked around in my Twitter for someone who could compose for the game, and Nik Sudan responded. He’s a moderator at GameJolt and fellow indie. He also participated on Game Boy Jam the last time and has the experience to make this kind of music. I think it really fits to the game. He did great job.

Cory: Yeah, absolutely. I thought it was great. I was also very fond of the art.

Jussi: This was the first time I was making graphics with such a limited color palette. The whole game uses just 4 colors and I really like the end result. Main character Timmy’s design is much more refined too compared to the original game’s sprite.

Cory: It’s really a pleasing game to look at, and I feel that you pulled off the Game Boy style well while the game itself still has a unique style and charm of its own.

Jussi: I was really inspired by classics such as Wario Land, Kid Dracula and the 2D platforming segments from Link’s Awakening. I wanted to make something that looks and feels like old classic Game Boy game but in my own style. I’ve greatly enjoyed the comments where people have said the game reminds them of the good old GB times or their childhoods, because that’s what I was aiming for. The whole game is one big nostalgia trip for folks who had and loved their Game Boys.

Cory: Nostalgia’s definitely a strong feeling. Most games that try and be nostalgic don’t really work with me—probably because I’ve played enough indie pixel art platformers to last a lifetime—but when they do succeed, it really is a cool experience.

Jussi: Nostalgia is a big factor in my works. I grew up with Nintendo consoles and love pixels and games with pixel art. I aim to make games I would want to play.

Cory: What are some of your favorite video games?

Jussi: Link to the Past⁶ and Yoshi’s Island⁷ on SNES are some of my favorites. On original Game Boy I loved the Wario Land⁸ series and it has been the biggest inspiration source for Dangerous Dungeons games. From more modern games I greatly enjoyed Terraria⁹ and Rogue Legacy¹⁰. I have lots of fondness for difficult 2D platformers.

6. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: A top-down action-adventure game released by for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1991 by Nintendo.
7. A platformer released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1995 by Nintendo.
8. Wario Land: A series of platformers published and produced by Nintendo. The first in the series, Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, was released for the Game Boy in 1994 by Nintendo.
9. An independent sidescrolling action-adventure-sandbox game inspired by Minecraft, released in 2011 by Re-Logic.
10. A roguelike platformer released by Cellar Door Games in 2013.

Cory: The last two you mentioned I believe make heavy use of random generation. Is that something you’re interested in?

Jussi: Yes, I would want to make a some sort of randomly generating roguelike¹¹ game sometime. At the moment I don’t know how I would go around doing it, though. I don’t know how to make randomly generated rooms or terrain.

11. A sub-genre of role-playing games traditionally involving random world generation, turn based actions, player leveling and permanent death, among other things. Games that borrow only some elements from the genre are sometimes referred to as “roguelike-likes.”

Cory: Yeah, I suppose it does require a fair bit of programming knowledge. Perhaps in the future.

Jussi: Perhaps. Or I could cheat and make various doors and ladders take the player randomly to one room from dozen of handmade ones. That would require lots of level designing though.

Cory: I’d be interested in seeing what you could do with the roguelike formula.

What do video games mean to you? Why do they matter?

Jussi: I have always had passion for videogames. I grew up with them and have been playing them since I could first hold a controller. When I was a kid my dream was to become a comic artist, but during recent years game developing has become much easier to get into thanks to programs like Stencyl and I have shifted towards the world of game developing. I have found my true talent and I’m sure I’ll be doing this for a long time.

Cory: Thanks a lot for taking the time to do this interview. It’s been real.

Jussi: Thank you too, it was pretty fun.

Follow Jussi on Twitter
Jussi’s website
Jussi’s Stencyl profile

Follow Cory on Twitter

blog.stencyl.com

The Siren Song of the Paper Cutter: Tips and Tricks from the Trenches of Paper Prototyping

gamasutra.com

By Tyler Sigman

Oh, Sweet Sound of Paper Going ssschunk!

For some, it’s the chirping of the birds and the wind rustling through the trees. For others it’s the sun cresting over the horizon while holding a cup of freshly-brewed coffee. And for Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now, it was a less-traditional “I love the smell of napalm in the morning!” Whatever it is, each of us has a “happy place” - something so core to our person that it fills a hole nothing else can. For me, it’s the undeniably seductive lure of the paper cutter.

Actually, bollocks to all that. I hate the paper cutter! With a vengeance, even! When I think about paper cutters, my back seizes up like an engine with no oil, my hands cramp with memory pains, and my brain desperately tries to think of more enjoyable alternate activities like picking up the dog poop or visiting the dentist for an extra checkup. (Uncovered by insurance, of course.)

The reason? Simple: I’ve spent far too many hours hunched over the cutter making paper prototypes.

However, my loss is, with any luck, your gain. This article is meant to be a small collection of learned experiences from the paper prototyping process; it’s a mix of tips, advice, and also a modicum of philosophy regarding the benefits of paper prototyping to assist with digital game design. The first part is about why paper prototyping is useful; the middle bit is about how to construct said prototypes; the end is a crash course overview of playtesting concerns.

“Me HEART Paper Cutter”

A Short but Invigorating Exposition on the Fundamentally Beneficial Qualities of Leveraging Paper Prototyping to Increase Total Quality of Digital Entertainment Products. (In Other Words: Why You Should Paper Prototype)

Before jumping into specifics of prototype construction, a quick review is in order to establish why paper prototyping can be beneficial to digital game projects.

THE BIGGEST REASON

If you read nothing else in this article, understand that paper prototyping can save your project TIME and MONEY. I hardly need to wax poetic on the inestimable value of these two little guys, other than to say that they are the two items that can never be obtained in satisfactory quantities. (Unless perhaps you are Blizzard?) The reason paper prototyping can save time and money is because you are able to start examining the gameplay of your game well in advance of large-scale coding and art asset production. You can do a creative and functional “check-up” to see if you are on the right track. If you are, great. If you aren’t, then you can initiate needed design changes without having to scrap hundreds of man-hours of programmer and artist labor.

You can also find dreaded “problems.” Any problems in design cascade to the rest of the team. For sake of analogy, let’s say programmers and artists are the large and small intestines. If so, then design problems are chicken with salmonella sauce. You get the TechnicolorTM picture.

Saving time and money is alone reason enough to prototype. My job done, I’m tempted to stop writing this section and go get some refreshments. But really, the fruity goodness doesn’t stop with point number 1, as points 2 through 6 below will illustrate.

Test Mechanics of Overall Game or a Game Subsystem One of the most straightforward reasons to make a prototype is to test out the overall game mechanics. You put the wheels on your game and give it a spin, so to speak.

It’s worth noting that you can make a prototype of an individual subsystem rather than the whole shebang at once. For example, some colleagues recently devised a prototype just to test out their game’s combat system; the prototype was never meant to capture the “whole game”, but rather just a specific self-contained system. Other self-contained systems might be things like economies or reward structures.

Test Balance

Similar to #2. In addition to “kicking the tires” of your game, you can also start putting the wax on—balancing. Any work you can do to balance early will pay off in later dividends. Your project is “nimble” early on. Changes aren’t that hard, which is in stark contrast to the terrible inertia that comes late in a project, where every change costs time, money, stress, and runs the risk of introducing cascading problems.

Take advantage of this temporary state. Iterate and improve.

Test Flow

Although you have to be careful about the huge differences in game flow between the analog and digital mediums (see later in this article), a paper prototype can help test for good flow—after all, you are still playing the game even if it is in a different format.

Test Fun

Sometimes a game can perform functionally, can be perfectly balanced, and can have a good flow, but it just isn’t fun. This can be for a variety of reasons—maybe theme is dry or the player just isn’t being challenged with interesting decisions. Whatever the reason, it’s possible that you will detect this problem early, during paper prototyping. Again, changes are possible early, so it is the time to make them.

Fill in Rules Holes

I’m always surprised at the rules holes that playtesting can discover. There’s nothing like sitting down and having to set up your game and play it. No matter how hard you try to visualize, plan, and analyze beforehand, playtesting will seek out holes like water in a bucket you used for BB-gun practice. These holes may be simple structural holes, like you forgot an important step in game setup/initialization. Or, they might be strategy holes (dominant strategies, loopholes, etc.). Regardless, playtesting helps bring them to light.

Jar Your Creative Juices

“Jar Your Creative Juices, Baby!” By “jar your creative juices”, I don’t really mean there is a canning and sterilization process involved.

There is a very nice side-benefit to the act of constructing and playing a paper version of your game or game system—it presents things in a new light. Looking at your project from a different perspective can aid your creativity. It is similar to other techniques in brainstorming and creative process. Chipping away at a problem from different sides helps to break logjams that look insurmountable from head-on. I almost always come away from my first couple playtest sessions with a ream of new ideas for the game. Some of them are even occasionally good!

The Limits of Paper Prototyping

Although there are some terrific reasons to make an analog prototype of digital game, there are also some inherent limitations to such a process. The first, and biggest, is that there are some games for which analog prototyping just doesn’t make sense. Case in point, games where a real-time action component is the sole mechanic.

An example is Spider-Man 2. In the excellent postmortem featured in Game Developer (September 2004), the developers discussed how the webslinging mechanic was absolutely central to the enjoyment of the game, and how they wanted to improve on the control scheme of the predecessor. To that end, they constructed a digital, playable prototype very early on in development - much earlier than an operable build would normally be available. For this game, it’s unlikely that an analog prototype would’ve been worth constructing (unless there was a subsystem to the game that deserved modeling).

Another example is Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time. The enjoyability of the game hinged on the fluidity of the player’s movement; it was important that the swinging, wall running, and linked acrobatics functioned well. Like the other example, the team responded by making an early digital prototype that captured the flow and motion of the game.

Makin’ Stuff

Ok, on to the nitty gritty!

The first and biggest tip for prototyping is a simple one: SCROUNGE. After all, the easiest way to make any game component is…don’t make it! Ride the coattails of someone else, and pilfer bits with abandon. (I mean physical bits, not 1/8-of-a-byte bits.)

If you’ve got a game collection, pop open the boxes and look for tokens, dice, markers, and other pieces that might serve a need. Just remember what you take, so you don’t end up in a situation a few months down the road where you have a table full of people rarin’ to go for an Axis and Allies game and then you suddenly realize you don’t have two tanks to rub together because you “borrowed” them all for your Wildebeests vs. Wehrmacht prototype you cobbled together in a fit of misguided inspiration one lazy Sunday when the air conditioning was failing. Been there, done that!

A great source for spare parts is your local thrift store. There are usually many board games to be had for only a buck or two each. And some are actually worth it! Also, if the weather is good, look for garage sales and the like.

“The Fruits of Your Labors – A Functioning Prototype!”

If your prototype needs a board, old cruddy board games fit the bill nicely—usually the boards are nice, sturdy chipboard. You can print out your own game board on normal paper and then just spray fix it or tape it onto the sacrificial board. I’ll talk more about boards later.

A last note about scrounging: don’t stop at games. There are a surprising number of household items that can serve as game components. Stores like Pier 1 and the like usually have a good selection of potential game parts, too - decorative items like glass beads, polished rocks… whatever. Basically, just keep your “eyes” on every time you’re in a store. You’ll start to see game innards all around you, and this doesn’t necessarily mean you need therapy.

Another source for good potential game parts are the toy aisles at supermarkets, Target, and the like. There are usually little packaged assortments of vehicles, toy soldiers, farmyard sets, etc., that can be an inexpensive boon for the practicing designer. Earth only knows how many Toy Soldier homebrew games there are out there.

A lot of the above might just sound like common sense… and it is. Just be resourceful, and you can keep the amount of work to a minimum by preventing the need to custom make every part of your prototype.

Rollin’ up Yer Sleeves

When it comes down to it, you often can’t avoid some actual layout and assembly time because you will need very specific items for your game. The most common - “the big hitters” - are cards, tokens/counters, and gameboards.

Cards

Many, many games feature a mechanic that involves cards. Even though you are prototyping a digital game, cards can be used to recreate many mechanics involving a random draw element - events, treasure finding, monster encounters, and the like. Although dice are obviously the cat’s meow as far as representing abstract randomness goes, sometimes cards are better for specific random applications. For instance, if there are 20 possible events that can happen to the player, you could use a 20-sided die and a look-up table in your prototype, or you could just make 20 event cards. Is one event more common than others? Easy, just make more than one copy of that event card and seed the deck appropriately to get the distribution you want.

With the usefulness of cards comes, sadly, a difficulty factor that is commensurate. Cards can be some of the most backbreaking and frustrating components to make - that is, unless you know a couple tips to make your life easier.

Cards are tricky for prototypes because often you need the cards to stand up well to wear (repeated playtests) and also you usually need them to shuffle well. Shuffling well means that the cards need a good weight to them and they also need to have very precise edges - uneven cuts result in “trick decks” where certain cards catch on your fingers more than others. These “trick decks” are also known as “shoddy workmanship” decks, and “my 6-year old uses scissors better than you” decks. At least that is what they are referred to in professional circles.

There are a lot of different ways to make cards, but so far the very easiest I’ve found is this:

Lay out the cards using your program of choice. Certainly, if you are a closet graphic designer or artist, use InDesign, Quark, Illustrator, or even Photoshop to mock-up your cards. However, don’t fret if you aren’t of that persuasion—you can make very serviceable cards just with MS Word. Check out the DRAWING toolbar.

Standard playing card size is 3.5” x 2.5”. That’s a nice, comfortable size that can fit a lot of content and has a good aspect ratio and a feel people are familiar with. You can fit 9 to a 8.5” x 11” page when mocking up—three rows of three.

If you don’t have a lot of content, don’t be afraid to do a smaller size card. You probably want to keep the same aspect ratio as the standard size, but not a big deal. A smaller size card means you might be able to fit more cards per page, which makes life a bit easier production-wise.

Make sure to include the card borderlines on your template. You’ll be cutting to them. (duh) You don’t need to allow any room between card edges—just butt them up right next to each other.

“Cards, Cards, Cards”

Print the cards out. Use standard 20-24 lb. multiuse paper. There’s no need to use 110 lb. cardstock or thicker, because of what you’ll do in step 4. If you want card backs, just print the card backs out as their own sheet(s). Don’t bother duplexing and trying to line the card backs up with the card fronts on a single piece of paper. It’s a royal PITA and you really don’t need to do it (see step 4).

Cut the cards out.

The absolute best tool you can use for this is a rotary paper cutter, such as the ones Dahl makes. A rotary paper cutter is more accurate and has better motion than a guillotine paper cutter. The guillotines can pull your paper as they cut, especially if the blade is rather dull or you are cutting more than one page at a time. Scissors work, too, but are even less preferable than the guillotine because they take longer. So, think of the three cutters as forming a transitive relationship (for you game mechanicians out there): rotary > guillotine > scissors.

Don’t worry about being exact in your cuts. This is a huge deal, and will save you tons of time! This will be ok, because…

Place your newly cut cards into card protector sleeves. These sleeves can be purchased from any specialty games retailer, and also from some mass-market stores. The sleeves are used by collectible card game players to prevent Cheetos and Mountain Dew from sliming their Magic and Pokemon “investments”. I use Dragonshields, but UltraPro makes a selection of card protectors as well. You want fairly sturdy ones—some cheaper card sleeves are so thin that they aren’t very good. Using the card protectors serves three important purposes:

Promotes shuffling by adding extra weight to your paper cards.

Promotes shuffling because the card sleeves are all exactly the same size. Your jagged, unevenly cut paper cards sit inside, and don’t screw up the perfect geometric consistency of your finished deck. Ah, as Einstein said, there is symmetry in mother nature after all.

Prevents Cheetos and Mountain Dew from sliming your prototype “investment”.

Counters/Tokens

Counters and tokens can be almost as maddening as cards; actually, they are really more maddening because cards get pretty easy using the above procedure.

Counters and tokens should be laid out similar to cards. However, a few layout tips:

Good token sizes are 0.75” square. 0.5” square starts getting pretty small. 1” square is great if you don’t have too many tokens or if you have plenty of room on your gameboard. Bigger than 1” square is only really good if you are doing something special with your counters/tokens that requires them to be “bigguns.”

I tend to butt all counters of a common group up right next to each other. But I put some page space between different types of counters. A bit of space will help during cutting (see step 4). If you’ve ever seen die-cut counter sheets in boardgames you buy, arrange like that.

Print the counters on normal paper or on 110 lb. cardstock. Then you really need to affix the paper to something heavier. There are two great options here, depending on your tolerance for stinkiness…

“The Stinky Option”. Go to your local DIY home improvement store and purchase some of the cheapest self-adhesive linoleum tile you can find. Buy the 12” x 12” size, which can usually be found for less than $1 each. Now, remove the adhesive liner and press your printed sheet down onto the tile. Press it down nice and evenly and try to avoid air bubbles—use a brayer if you have one (artist speak for tiny little roller). Linoleum tile has a terrific weight and feel and is very resilient to handling. Sadly, the adhesive is, well, STINKY! When you have your prototype out, expect people to give you looks, that seem to say “What is that cheesy smell?” You need to develop some convenient ways to drop an explanation into casual conversation and thereby exonerate yourself from embarrassing social faux-pas. I recommend such subtle cues as “Heh…man! Isn’t this prototype stinky? It’s the linoleum tiles. The epoxy or somethin’. Ick!” Repeat this to every passer-by, and over the company intercom if necessary. Or, don’t explain and suffer the shame. As game designers, we must take one on the chin for the good of the game sometimes.

“The Non-Stinky Option”. Use spray adhesive to mount your counter printouts to matboard. Matboard is relatively cheap—especially if you can buy damaged sheets or sheets with visual flaws (which don’t matter to you). Matboard is very durable and not toooo hard to cut. Another option is foam core, although that is harder to cut overall.

Regardless of which of the above two backing materials you used, now use a hobby knife and a steel rule and cut out your rows of counters. Use a sharp blade, and try hard not to perform any inadvertent amputations. It’s easy to get careless while cutting out counter row #26. So stay alert and don’t bleed on your nice print job. Once you’ve cut out your counter rows, I find the easiest way to cut out individual counters is by using scissors. A good pair of scissors is up to the challenge of a series of 1” cuts; they just don’t work well for cutting the initial rows out. When you’re cutting with the scissors, you’ll find that sometimes it causes the counter edges to curl up a bit. Experiment with placement of the counter on the scissors blade—you can find a sweet spot where the cut is still possible (doesn’t require too much force) but the counter doesn’t really get curled up.

“A Sheet of Counters is A Sheet of Counters by Any Other Name”

Boards

Ok, boards are the last of the Big 3. Boards are a bit funny because there’re many different ways to make them, and it’s heavily dependent on your available resources and technology. Probably the best option is to print out your board in one piece on a large format plotter, preferably color. Since most of us don’t have access to those, perhaps because we no longer work for engineering companies where we can slip an extra print off now and again, a more common option is just print your gameboard out in tiled format. Regardless of which way, your next decision is whether to mount your board or not. There’s no need to—you can always playtest with simple paper printouts. Not mounting the board also means that changes can be made and then you just hit “Print” and you’re back in action again. If you do decide to mount, probably your best option is to reuse a board from some cruddy board game you find at a thrift shop. They’re all set-up to fold and everything! Other options are matboard and foam core.

An altogether separate option is to just draw your gameboard and eschew the computer altogether. This really comes down to preference. If you are a pencil and Art-Gum TM type, or a drafting lead and engineer’s scale type, then go for it. Also, sometimes drawing your own board can simply be quicker than using a com-pewter. I only draw boards manually when I am in a huge rush or delusionally tired, but that’s just because I have “limited artistic ability”, which is a euphemism for being a crappy drawer.

“A Perfectly Suitable (if ugly) Hand-Made Board”

Super-Secret Clandestine Game Construction Resource: The Board Game Designer’s Forum

Although I’ve shared some of my own tips on paper game construction, a great resource for other tips and opinions is the Board Game Designer’s Forum: www.bgdf.com. Truth be told, I avoid the site for the most part - not because it’s not useful (it is!). It’s just that there are so many good tips to be found, it can be a bit… distracting. Plus, I don’t like to expose myself to a million other design ideas while I’m in the midst of gelling a design. It really is a good site, though.

Gathering it all Together

Organizing your prototype and containing it is important to make your life easier and also to make it portable. I use fishing tackle boxes and map/poster tubes. You can find little tackle boxes for cheap at the K-Marts, Targets, and also at certain unnamed ginormous superpowerful mega-corporations of the world that begin with the letter “W” and are based out of Arkansas - a strange state whose name is pronounced quite differently than appearance would seem to insinuate. (A name which is exceptionally confusing when taken in context with the nearby state “ Kansas ”, pronounced “Kan-saw” to some.)

Other Considerations: Looks Good vs. Tastes Great

The great Aesthetic Dilemma. Having a sexy prototype improves play experience. However, you might find you spend more time prototyping and not enough time playing. Also, making a stunning prototype might reduce your willingness to make necessary changes that would require you to dismantle your lovely creation.

Also, there’s a school of thought that says “if they enjoy playing your terrible, ugly, lame prototype, then they will LOVE it when it is jazzed-up.” Well, that’s how I rationalize it anyway.

Playtesting

“Playtesting - Let’s Put Some Lipstick on this Pig and See if it Can Dance!”

Playtesting is a huge subject in its own - too big to cover exhaustively in this article. However, here are some key tips to bear in mind:

Have an idea of what outcome you’d like out of the playtest session.

This can be broad (“I’d like to see if the game is ‘fun,’” “I’d like to see what the flow is like.”) or it can be narrow (“I’d like to see how the game plays with 2 players,” “I’d like to put the psychic combat system through its paces.”). Whatever it is, just have a goal. Otherwise, you might have a waffling, undirected playtest session with no concrete deliverables or quantifiable outcome.

Be prepared to write.

Sounds dumb, but be prepared to record feedback, “bugs”, and data. It’s easy to get so focused on getting the prototype made and set up that you don’t focus on prepping to get the most out of the session(s) possible. If necessary, have an extra helper to act as secretary and record important information, so you can focus on administering the game.

Be prepared to adjust in real-time.

Almost every time I do a first playtest, I’m amazed by how different something in the game is from what I predicted. Also, even though I’ve gotten better and better and drafting rulesets, there’s nothing like the first time you set up and try to play through a game - you are guaranteed to find holes in your rules. I’m not talking about degenerate strategies or anything fancy; rather I mean true show-stopping holes, like “oh, how does that work?” In any case, be ready to plug holes, make rules changes, and otherwise mold your game on-the-fly.

Case in point: I just finished up a prototype for a board game which involved a particular mechanic that I was quite proud of, one that I conceptually believed to be a huge part of the game. On turn 2 of the very first playtest, I realized the mechanic was 500% better in my head than in practice. Accordingly, I could instantly tell the game was going to be a bust unless I removed it. So remove it I did, right then and there during the very first playtest. The game immediately improved, and I realized it could stand on its own without the Golden Mechanic. Adjust on-the-fly.

Be impartial.

Playtesting is one of the absolute best things you can do for your game - don’t corrupt the information you get by arguing with your playtesters. Listen to them. They aren’t necessarily right, but they will provide honest feedback. They haven’t been living inside of your head, and they don’t know how great your game could be. They only know how great the game is.

“Know” your playtesters.

If your game is hard-core strategy aimed at the professional gamer, don’t waste much time having a casual gamer play it and tell you how complex and confusing it is.

1st playtest vs later playtests.

A last thing: the 1 st playtest for a game is a whole different animal than later playtest sessions. For me, the goal of the 1 st playtest is to successfully get the game set-up and played through. It’s like casting a wide net and seeing what kind of fish live in a particular stretch of water. Later playtests are hunts for specific fish.

Don’t expect your first playtest session to be fun. You might spend the majority of your time just plugging hull-breaches and trying to keep the game afloat. There’s an old adage in the kit-plane industry: don’t schedule your first flight test to be a party or social event where all your friends and family come to see all your hard work pay off. Save that for after you’ve got the kinks worked out. Don’t put any more pressure on yourself than necessary. Your first playtest session is about rolling up your sleeves and hopping into the ring. You might not be photogenic after getting drubbed by Clubber Lane for 10 rounds, so don’t plan an evening gala.

Playtesting NDAs

Remember the legal forms. Non-disclosure Agreements are vital for all involved.

Review forms

The more you prepare for your playtest session, the more value it will yield. Preprinted review forms are a great way to get meaningful feedback from testers.

Yes, a lot of this is just like focus testing, so many of the same tips apply.

“A Victim…err ‘Assistant’… is Always Helpful”

Off to the Guillotine with Ye!

When it comes down to it, paper prototyping can almost always provide benefits to your game development that far exceed the effort, cost, and time involved. The worst that is likely to happen is that find you’re well on-track with a good design. The best that could happen is that you prevent crippling changes from occurring late in the project. There might be no faster way to becoming a social pariah in your company circles than the words “Late Design Change.”

Much of prototyping is common sense, and can be boiled down to 3 easy steps: improvise, adapt, revise. So what’re you reading this for? Get cutting!

“Infect the Towns of the World with Your Plague Prototypes”

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What Makes Games Good - a post on Tom Francis' blog

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What Makes Games Good

A few times lately, non-gaming friends and relatives have asked me: what’s the appeal of games? Good question! The people who don’t ask it seem to assume it’s something terrible, like bloodlust, or it’s some unknowable new drug they will never understand.

It’s also a useful one for anyone involved with games to ask. It’s one game critics like me should be able to answer reflexively. It’s one developers should answer before they start making something. And it’s one gamers should probably think about before writing a one-star Amazon review saying ‘lol ass’.

I’m sad to say that on the press side of things, we haven’t really got anywhere. Half of us apparently think games meaningfully break down into “Presentation, Graphics, Sound, Gameplay, and Lasting Appeal”. And the other half believe they’re unquantifiable pixie dust and anyone who wants even the faintest idea of their merits should have to read 3,000 words of waffle.

The former is confusing a game’s component parts with what the whole achieves. The latter is just giving up. It’s not that games can be captured in a few metrics, it’s that they still can’t in 3,000 words. So instead of abandoning analysis, let’s just be smarter about where analysis stops.

It can’t stop at words like ‘gameplay’, because those aren’t useful: tell me a game has good gameplay, and all I really know is that you like it. Are your actions in it satisfying on some tactile level? If so, great. We don’t really need to know why they’re satisfying, just to say ‘it feels good’ is far more specific and useful than what we had before.

That’s what I mean by being smarter about where analysis stops. Keep asking “Why is that good?” until you hit the primal, instinctive pleasure response you’re having. It’s not impossible to keep going, but it’s more neuroscience than critique past that point.

I’ll try to explain six things that can make a game great, for me. Games don’t need to do all of them well, sometimes one is enough. But the hope is to cover every kind of draw they can have. Every game I like, I like because it does one of these things well.

1. Challenge

How much you enjoy tackling what you’re being asked to do.

Challenge is about what a game asks your brain or fingers to do, and whether it’s something you enjoy struggling with. Personally, I don’t like struggling with anything that requires extreme precision or reactions, like Super Meat Boy. But I love struggling with mental problems, like the time-bending of Braid.

Obviously difficulty is part of it – either extreme makes it hard to engage with the challenge. But just as importantly, difficulty is a way of pacing rewards. It makes games enjoyable by spacing out the dopamine kicks of success, so that you never get bored of getting them, nor of waiting for them.

A game like Tetris has a simple challenge – SORT THESE SHAPES – but a well-paced one. Its mechanics naturally make satisfying successes frequent at first, then rarer and harder the longer you play. There’s never a time in Tetris when clearing a line isn’t satisfying.

2. Feel

Making individual interactions convincing and pleasurable

When you fire a virtual gun, feel is the sound of the shot, the muzzle flash, the recoil of the weapon model, whether it offsets my aim, the reaction of the target, and what all that suggests about the unseen parts of the interaction: the weight of the bullet, its hardness, where it hit, how that felt, what damage has been done.

But feel is just as important in non-violent games. Bejeweled is incredible at it: I know exactly how hard a topaz is despite the fact that it never touches anything, just from its sound and motion. The sound of four gems forming a super-gem, and the glow that gives it, makes the thing feel dense, pregnant – all reinforced by the cathartic boom when it goes off.

If you’re ever wondering why a PopCap game succeeded despite being suspiciously similar to an existing game that was only moderately popular, it’s because the first game got the challenge right and PopCap added the feel.

3. Freedom

The extent to which a game reacts to your choices with interesting results

A game that put you in an infinite empty field would have a lot of freedom in the ordinary sense of the word, but it’s not just about maximising options. Freedom is about how many different options the game has an interesting response to.

If the result is just “Your character moves a bit in that infinite field”, that’s not interesting. In Deus Ex, though, your choices about how to approach a wide-open level all lead to meaningfully different situations. The front door gets you into a dangerous dance with a patrolling bot, the side entrance exposes you to a lot of guards, the rear gets you a key to the building. Shooting attracts guards and results in a big gunfight, stealth keeps things under control but gives you more threats to think about in the long run.

There are more complex reasons why those choices are particularly compelling, and more complex ways that the sub-options within them interact. But basically, a big reason Deus Ex is great is that it gives you a lot of options, and has something different to offer you whichever one you pick.

4. Place

A world you want to be in

It’s funny how many people can’t see the point of games, but see traveling as one of the most enriching and exciting pleasures of life. I love both, often for the same reason and in the same way. Stepping off a zeppelin in Durotar is as clear and fond a memory getting off a plane in Zimbabwe.

Mirror’s Edge is a good case study, because place is the only thing it does perfectly. It shows how an urban environment can be as visually exciting and artistically inventive as a different planet. It had an incredible vision for its setting, and the tech was bent and boosted to show it dazzlingly. The place glows, and my desire to be there outweighs every problem with the game’s mechanics.

5. Promise

The temptation of further possibilities

You could claim this doesn’t count, that the mere promise of something interesting or better is not a pleasure in itself, just the anticipation of one. Nope!

On its most basic level, the promise of ever-better items and stats keeps RPGs interesting way beyond the sell-by date of their challenge and feel. But promise can also be the anticipation of story developments, new puzzle mechanics or unknown abilities.

Most of my time actually playing Dawn of War 2: Retribution was before I unlocked the particular abilities for my heroes that turned them into a perfectly co-ordinated killing machine. But long before I had them, they were making the game exciting just by sitting there, greyed out on the character sheet, promising.

6. Fantasy

The appeal of playing this role

This is different to story – I think Mass Effect 2′s story is outright bad, but I love being a badass lady space captain zooming around the galaxy punching robots and telling people to fuck themselves.

For some reason ‘fantasy’ has become a slightly shameful word, while ‘escapism’ – trying to get away from your life – is accepted as normal. I think discovering new places and ideas is healthier than vegetating in front of some glossy people making out on TV. I don’t play games to escape my life, I play them to explore new ones.

Why isn’t Story on there?

It’s a little personal, of course. But for me, the pleasure of a good story is in making this alternate life interesting (Fantasy), suggesting a rich world (Place), and keeping me wondering about what’s coming next (Promise). If it doesn’t do any of those things – even if it’s Of Mice and Men – it doesn’t make a good game. So it’s not a pleasure in itself.

How does this help?

An early version of Gunpoint’s plot was an attempt at a good story, rather than a good Fantasy. The player was involved, but his role wasn’t a very exciting one, and there was no hint of a world beyond this plot.

Deciding on this list made it dramatically easier to see and solve those problems in a total rewrite. I started with the Fantasy – being a spy for hire – and built everything around that. I’ll get a bunch of other stuff wrong, but that’s one less.

Has it also helped you understand why you love, hate or only like certain games?

It’s also helped me understand why I love, hate, or only like certain games.

Why isn’t Just Cause 2 my favourite game ever? Great Feel, amazing Place, but it doesn’t have Promise like the others do. There’s no sense that anything interestingly different will happen if I keep playing.

Why do I never stick with World of Warcraft? Amazing sense of Place, no Feel. Why don’t I like the Witcher games as much as people tell me I will? I hate the Fantasy, I don’t want to be this guy, in this world, doing this.

And why is Minecraft so popular? Under a traditional notion of challenge, it has none. But it does rarefy its rewards well, and that’s what Challenge is really about. Minecraft is great at Challenge, Feel, Place, Freedom and Promise, so it’s not surprising it appeals to a pretty broad audience.

This list is a first stab at something I’ll keep working on as I write about and try making games. I hate the feeble attitude that games are too complex, too new, or too arty to quantify their appeal in specific or useful ways. Because it’s hurting our ability to understand them, to explain them to people who don’t get them, and to make them better.

More Amateur Hour, Gunpoint

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The winners of Ludum Dare, and what to learn from them Rat King Entertainment

ratking.de

This was originally a quick and dirty talk I held in 2014 at our Global Game Jam location in Leipzig, Germany. I wanted to give the audience (mostly students, a lot of them without experience in the art of game jam) an impression on what is possible during a game jam even when you're alone and have to do stuff from scratch; so I showed them the last five Ludum Dare compo winners, which means each of them got the first place in the "Overall" category. The talk would conclude with some best practices, at least in my opinion.

As most of you probably know, Ludum Dare is an online game jam held several times in the year, with the big versions always commencing in April, August and December. Thousands of participants make a game in 48 hours each time, and a lot of them also are part of the quite active community surrounding the jam. Everybody who joins can be sure to get feedback and answers via the blog on ludumdare.com, and via the IRC channel #ludumdare on AfterNET. And don't forget that for three weeks afterwards, every participant can rate all the others' games, so the brutal final ratings for each category (e.g. Graphics, Fun, Mood) are there for the whole world to see. With the high numbers of entries, winning the competition may sound nearly impossible. So let's take a look at some of those who actually did it!

Ludum Dare 24 – Theme: Evolution

Evoland is a Zelda-like with a funny idea implemented well. It has a lot of chests – in each chest you find a feature that hauls the game to the next step of videogame evolution. At first you can only walk right, but you get the ability to walk left soon. After that, you can walk north and south, how cool is that! Scrolling! Colors! Sounds! Weapons! Nicolas Cannasse broke down a pretty standard Zelda clone into its most minimal parts, used those parts to let the player explore them, and made a unique game this way. (Later on he even extended the game and you can now buy it on Steam.)

As a game jam game Evoland is very ambitious and I couldn't believe that it was made in 48 hours. I assume Nicolas had the idea and concept very early in the process, and using a programming language he invented himself might have given him a good headstart.

Ludum Dare 25 – Theme: You Are The Villain

Atomic Creep Spawner

Atomic Creep Spawner!! reminds me a bit of Dungeon Keeper, although you can only do a fraction of what is possible in that game. A pompous knight is raiding your very own dungeon, stealing your money and destroying your orbs, and you have to stop him by spawning a lot of monsters. You create those hordes of zombies and ghosts via simple clicks on the floor, and they find their own way (more or less) to the rampaging knight. A fair bit of AI must have been programmed for this game.

Made by Sébastien Bénard (known as deepnight, one of the most successful Ludum Darers!), Atomic Creep Spawner features great humor and amazing pixel art. Sébastien even found time to include a tutorial at the beginning. What the game lacks in interactivity it makes more than up with polish and love for details.

Ludum Dare 26 – Theme: Minimalism

MONO implements the theme via its graphical style (which looks simplicistic, but is actually very well done), but most certainly not via the gameplay. While at first glance it seems to be a minimalistic game in every sense – you navigate a small sphere through a world of rectangles – the levels soon become more and more diverse, which is what keeps the game interesting. This is a nice trick you can learn from: make a game with only some basic functionality, and if you have the time, add another level with new elements and mechanics inside it – rinse, repeat.

Tim Hantel managed to make a neat dexterity puzzle game with a lot of atmosphere, mostly by adding a fitting soundscape. The gameplay mechanics sometimes make the game a bit frustrating (you die by touching a wall already), but in generalthe player's death is a forgivable experience: you spawn instantly at the level start again. An important lesson I think.

Ludum Dare 27 – Theme: 10 Seconds

PROBE TEAM

PROBE TEAM could easily be part of the Ludum Dare before – it uses one single color only, enhanced by some cool looking post effects. While I never liked the theme in itself, because I always felt that it would cripple gameplay concepts instead of fertilize them, Andrew Shouldice actually made an interesting type of exploration game out of it. You start little probes which have 10 seconds of fuel each (so be economical with your commands), lead them through some kind of maze and activate triggers to open doors. It feels a bit repetitive, but the moody atmosphere absolutely helps to tolerate and even enjoy it.

Ludum Dare 28 – Theme: You Only Get One

One Take

One Take by Daniël Haazen is a great example for an unusual idea creating a whole new experience. You play as a camera operator taking one continuous take from a movie scene, and all you do is following orders from a film director in the form of short sentences, like "Zoom in on the sheriff" or "Go back to the guy in the alley". The scenes are a bit animated (while most of the action comes from yourself) and actually feel like small movies – already worth an honorable mention in my opinion. The cherry on top are the pixelated newspapers after each level, including reviews about the 'movie' and your performance.

Learnings

So what can we learn from these great examples of Ludum Dare rapid game development, for our own jam games?

Make something simple. All the mentioned games concentrate on a single idea. Be it spawning monsters in a dungeon or moving a small sphere around obstacles – important is to focus the game's concept on one aspect and not trying to add more and more features. Of course, this implies you actually have a nice idea that can be played barebone and that you like.

Be inspired by the theme. This one surprised me a bit, probably because more often than not the theme of a jam hinders instead of helps me. But all the winners above are very close to the theme, and that must tell something, probably about inspiration.

Think in two dimensions. Although one of the games uses Unity, all of them are 2D games, varying from totally abstract to concrete pixel art. I don't know exactly why that is, but there is probably more than one factor why jam games prefer to be 2D. My guesses are: the game is simpler to make, the graphics look better while being less work, there are a lot of premade frameworks, and you get a nostalgia bonus.

Use a framework. The Ludum Dare rules state that you must make your game from scratch, but it is allowed to use libraries, tools and engines that were already made by you or others. So use them! The winners from above utilized Haxe (compiled to Flash), Java with libgdx, Unity and LÖVE. Three of these games were playable in the browser (with plugins), which might also be a small factor adding to their successes. Remember that Ludum Dare's winner are determined by people who have to play thousands of other entries, too – the less problems they have to play your game, the more likely they will play it.

Generally you should try to make your game as accessible as possible. Deepnight's winning game Atomic Creep Spawner includes a tutorial, but you don't always have to go this far. Just don't innovate where it isn't needed, and explain things when they come up for the first time, be it via text or picture (better yet, force the user to play it to understand it).

The last learning for now is somewhat vague, as the games tackle this very differently. Some of them use a lot of humor, via little comments from the characters for example, others are pretty atmospheric, often thanks to their great use of sound. What we can take away from this is: don't shy away from trying to evoke emotions in the player. It seems the humoristic way is a bit easier than the one with the dark mood and the feels. Speak to the player, or let them explore interesting places. Give them reasons to attach to your game!

Conclusion

Making a game in 48 hours is hard, winning Ludum Dare is even harder. But if you look at the above examples you see it's not impossible! Sure, you need to know your tools in and out – the Ludum Dare Top 10 isn't the place for learning a new programming language. (This could be a bonus learning.) Just keep in mind to have fun and make something worth playing. Everything else comes afterwards.

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