Nachtfischer

But, but... what IS a cake? Haha, seriously. I like them both, but if I have the choice: CAKE!!!

So, if someone asks a non-trivial question, we should either just ignore it or take the typical "spray and pray approach" of just throwing out random opinions on what we think and what he could have meant to begin with? I don't think that will get us anywhere useful in any discussion. We totally should start with defining challenge. Or in fact, Rathlord should, as he was the one asking!

First of all: It does not alter anything. Why does it have to? Rathlord asked if there was a challenge to the game and I answered the question. Hell, no. I would never want GTA to be a game. Its strength is really the incredible potential it has as a pure sandbox experience. I would amplify that without any compromise and we'd likely have one of the greatest interactive systems ever made in the history of mankind.

Why don't you think it's relevant? Isn't it necessary to be able to NOT make it, when you want there to be a "challenge"?

I agree 100 %. I mean, you can't even lose the game, right? So how can it be challenging in the sense of the definition given above? If you can't fail, it's not a test. You are an undying super villain wielding the second most powerful weapon following quicksave: checkpoints!

Exactly what I meant above. It's a neat toy, that could be so much better if it got rid of all the wannabe-game crap.

It has nothing to do with the game being old at all. Pacman holds up extremely well today, because it is actually a robust system of a GAME. The same is true for Tetris, Space Invaders, Joust and many others. Those were actually designed games. With genuinely new and well-working mechanics! Wheras the last decades were controlled by the technological race for better graphics and sound to make games look and feel like movies (which is the biggest mistake the industry has ever made and the reason for game design still being in its infancy). All the things you listed have nothing to do with games, but are tons of STUFF poured over an actually boring and shallow system to make it SEEM interesting in some way.

Controls requiring precise platforming or quick movement in a 3D environment are pretty much inherently broken. Also, the way the game makes you replay huge chunks of boring and stupid puzzles all the time is more than disrespectful towards the player's lifetime. Why was it amazing? Can you think of anything NOT having to do with superficial values/spectacle?

That's true and obviously a fault of fundamentally flawed game design for the last decades. Everything has to be 3D because it "looks nice". Most developers don't even think about the fact that most 3D games would function even better in 2D (I'm especially looking at plaftormers, RPGs and typical "board-like" strategy games). These games don't NEED 3D, they just have it because you HAVE to. (Or at least HAD to for a long time now...) I applaud you for actually making use of the third dimension.

At the very least since it's in 3D, Zelda IS total rubbish. The newer titles are basically only interesting for babies and the N64 ones suffer from horrible controls and unfocused "spray and pray" design somewhere between toy and puzzle. The high metacritic scores only serve to prove once again how ridiculous the modern day game press is and how arbitrary their criteria. The only reason 3D Zelda is held in high regard, is technological spectacle. Beyond the superficial "greatness" of sound, graphics and scale, there's nothing even remotely resembling a robust interactive system. (GTA is a lot better, but should finally accept it's nature in being a toy and get rid of all the "gamey" crap muddying up the system!)

Is there a score in UnrealWorld? If there is one, you can see it as a game, but then it's a horribly unfocused and muddied up game. I like to look at it as a totally loose system of exploring mechanics, i.e. a great toy. DF didn't have a score the last time I played it. So how the hell is that supposed to be a game? You could define your score as "days survived" or something, but it's really such a huge system of so much stuff that I can't see it being a reasonable contest of decision-making (i.e. a game).

UnReal World is, too. In fact, they're both not games at all, but some of the best toys ever released.

AAA developers do this all the time without that crutch. Are they better? (Technically: yes. Artistically: no.)

1. If you make a game, and do so not just for practice but as an expression of your creativity (i.e. art), you should make sure to fill a need. I don't think this game will ever do that. (Do the developers themselves think so?) 2. Unity is not automatically bad. I'm sure people know that, but it sounded a bit like it in previous posts (like "Oh, it's Unity, so it's a bad game!"). The game apparently being coded in C# is an indicator that Unity is not the problem here. Missing some reasonable design concept beyond "copy some stuff and throw more stuff on top" might be one, though.

So, how is this innovative? You say it in the thread title and in the first sentence, but then you go on and throw a list of three completely generic and NOT innovative features at us. Seems weird.

So, this is a game that actually uses 3D for something else than technological spectacle? That's good!

Wow, I wouldn't have expected the Scorpions and Seether after that statement. Where's your Black Metal love?

First off, a Kickstarter campaign is not an Indiegogo campaign. Second, I couldn't find any information on how your game differs from any other fighting game. Like, how is it different from Street Fighter? And I don't mean graphics or story, I mean the game. Why should I potentially support it? I assume there's something to the "elements"? But it's never explained, it just says the elements "are there".

I finally managed to really get into Outwitters. And I LOVE it. Here's why: Elegance: The basic rules are really simple and clear, therefore very easy to learn. No tons of unit types or special abilities. No items at all. No scrolling. Simply because the game doesn't need that "stuff". It manages to create an immense emergent complexity rarely seen these days (especially in so called "videogames"). Tactical twists and possibilities open up all the time. It's really amazing! Efficiency: There is no time wasted at all in this game. Every single decision is important and interesting. Every turn is totally meaningful in the context of the full match. Again, an absolute rarity in the digital games sector, where the players' time is more often than not disrespected and treated as a "happily disposable resource". Focus: Everything in the game is strongly connected to the core: Wits. This single resource lets you buy units, issue movement commands and attacks. You get a fixed number of Wits each turn, plus a bonus from special tiles if you have control over them, plus one from killing opponent's units. Again, that's part of the immense elegance of the game. On top of that, the asymmetry is treated in a beautifully constrained way. Every team has the exact same unit types, except for one special unit, which makes them all different enough, yet doesn't break the balance. Determinism: Randomness tends to be the factor that screws my enjoyment of seemingly okay games all the time. So many designers add it to their game to make it seem more interesting (i.e. to make decisions seem more ambiguous) than it really is. It's a cheap and easy way to prevent your system from breaking down. Now, nothing is random in Outwitters. Every unit has a deterministic attack strength, a deterministic movement range etc. It's all based on your creativity as a player to make the best out of the emergent behaviors of your units' capabilities. Besides, as this is a turn-based strategy game there obvisouly isn't any execution involved. The impact of your decisions is not diminished at all. In fact, it's maximized! The only hidden information is the "fog of war", which is itself strongly connected to your skill in keeping as much of the battlefield visible as possible (another incredibly elegant decision: A unit's movement range is also exactly how far it can see!). The one caveat is, that this is only available on iOS and a pure multiplayer experience. I'd love to be able to practice against some AI. Well, once you took the plunge and went through your first few games against other players, it'll pretty much be a non-issue. There's a brilliant league system and matchmaking against equally skilled players is a matter of seconds. Oh, by the way: This is a free game. And not your daily "free to play" crap. You get one of the four teams for free and CAN (I think you should) buy the other ones for a few dollars. What you get for free though, is the full game. There are no in-game resources you need to "grind" for or pay money for or something. This is a complete premium game gone free (which is sadly why it financially didn't get what it actually deserves). If you have an iOS device (this works GREAT on small screens, too), do yourself a favor and give this game a shot. And if you want to do the videogame world a favor, buy the other teams to support the developers behind one of the best digital game designs ever.

1 - Great! Interactive tutorials are one of the main advantages digital board games have over their physical counter-parts (the other one being efficiency, i.e. "more game per second"). I play board game adaptations for iOS all the time and the ones with tutorial (missions) are surely the easiest to learn. (Although I am one of the rare kind that actually likes to read rules. ) 2 - Yeah, I see how that's probably the biggest challenge. Especially when adapting board games for mobile devices obviously. I'd suggest looking at the work Playdek (e.g. Agricola) and Campfire Creations (Stone Age) have done on iOS. They are considered top-notch when it comes to neatly arranged interfaces with very high amounts of information. 3 - Well, to me they are simply insulting in both cases. It's like the game tells you: "Sorry, this time you don't matter that much! It's not that you've done something wrong, but the dice don't like your face!!!" And by the way, "dice" are essentially used all the time in videogames (they're just not called dice). Almost every RPG uses them to resolve combat (you know, to-hit-ratio etc.). 4 - A compromise is probably the way to go. Especially if you want to please non-board-gamers, too. Although in my experience with serious gaming communities (like BoardGameGeek or Pocket Tactics) I've seen that most peopl that really care about the game, don't care about the presentation that much. A functional interface is much more important than flashy graphics.

I thought so, and in fact, I love board games and think they're on average MUCH more interesting than (by far) most of today's videogames. If it's a conversion then it's obviously not your fault, but it's not "obvious" for board games to have dice. Actually I think dice are the cheapest way of handling action. They also add ambiguity and uncertainty in a very simple and cheap manner. But on the flip side they take away much depth and skill there could be to the game. It's like throwing out the baby with the bath water: You want uncertainty in your decision-contest, to make it not easily solvable, so you add chaos (i.e. randomness). But with that chaos you at the same time hurt the core of your system (the impact of player decisions). It just bothers me that so many people think board games need dice or highly random card draws to be interesting. Whereas actually the opposite is true. The most long-lasting and competitively robust systems rather shy away from randomness. I'm thinking of Chess, Go, Through The Desert, Puerto Rico, even Agricola. Then again, this is coming from somebody (me) for whom learning and individual skill gain are the core values of games themselves. This is where I get the fun from. And these values are obviously damaged by chaotic randomness and dependance on luck. Dice add that gambling aspect, that I myself find at least annoying, mostly just frustrating. Other people obviously like that and war gamers are probably among that group...

Actually this looks quite interesting. But then the number one sin of (almost) all war games comes into play: dice. Dice all over the place. They take away so much potential depth and interestingness from the strategy, it's a shame. Also, why do you want 3D graphics? Although they might not hurt too badly if you keep it isometric and make camera-fiddling a non-issue. On top of that, never make your players wait for animations to play out. Either don't have animations or make them asynchronous to the actual gameplay. In any serious strategy gamer's head the game will break down into an abstract affair anyways.

Since I recently posted about my long-lost musical escapades in another forum... you shall get haunted by a copy of that post, too.

Been playing a few matches of A Brief History Of The World on iOS (board game adaptation). It's neat to see the "grandfather" of Small World in action. Then again, it's much more dice-heavy and much less elegant, so I'll surely stick to SW in the long run...

"Just the mondoid"... poor mondoid.