Incoherent Game Design Ramblings

[Sideshowjim]

Hello Jim Horn here one of the designers of Bit Shifter. From time to time I will post here our thoughts with the on going development of Bit Shifter. Basically what's rattling around in our heads. We hope that it will get a conversation started because we feel it is important to hear from you the player , it can help us see thru the development fog.

This brings me to today’s topic: game design and game flow. For those who have never played Bit Shifter, well go play it! :-D] You fly a hover ship called the Scandisc and it’s your job to deploy these little robots, called “bits”, to clean the virus infecting your PC. We will be talking about those bits and how they interact with the design of the game and how they contribute to the flow of the game. When you deploy the bits you have 2 main options: to stay around them and defend them, or leave them where they are and go do other tasks that need your attention, and when you get back, either the bit is waiting for you (safe in a bubble) or is “broken” (lying in a heap, smoking). In either case, all you need to do is slurp it up with your bit beam and redeploy it giving you no penalty for letting a bit break.

This is an issue we have discussed, and that has come up in critiques of the game. Is it a problem? We are not sure. It is an issue that has burned many hours of design discussion. How do we solve this without breaking the flow of the game? It feels good right now. You can fly around managing bits without interruption. One idea we have entertained is this: Have a delay to pick up the bit where you must keep the beam on it a while, healing it, before you can pick it up. We have also considered the opposite where there is a delay throwing the bit out. Both break up the flow of the game, making the deployment and management of the bits more tedious and not fun. Since we are not sure this a problem we really have, we left no penalty.

So here comes along you tuber NTRedmage (No Talent Red Mage) who brought up the same issue, no penalty for broken bits, but he had a better idea. He asks: what if it took health from your Scandisc? Ahah! that is a cost that would not break up the flow, because the health could be taken away instantly. We are thinking each bit could take either 5 or 10 hp from your ship for each broken bit you pick up. Perhaps there is some lower limit of health, where you can still heal bits but it won’t hurt the ship. It’s kind-of like those old school beat-em ups where when you do a special move you lose health, but when you hit a certain percentage of health you can still do the move and not lose health. This was one of those things that I wish i thought of but credit goes to NTRedmage. :-) This idea doesn’t break up the flow while still penalizing the player just a little bit for letting their bits get pummeled into a heap of smoking wreckage.

Now for the hardest part: how do we teach you that picking up a bit will lower your health? Using a talk bubble that pauses the game for you to read would, itself, break up the flow. When teaching a player, we obviously don’t want to pause the game. We want the player to learn by doing, be more engaged and have a greater sense of accomplishment. So, how to depict healing bits with health from the the Scandisc? Perhaps have the ship flash red and call attention to the health thru animations and sounds? Maybe, but what is obvious to us designing the game might not be obvious to the player, so lots of testing would be needed to make sure we have the right cues to direct the player’s attention. Since this is a problem we might not have, we may also not try to solve it. After all, it might feel like you are being penalized for doing what you are supposed to do: shift bits. What do you think?

Check out NTRedmage review on our store page

[Avalanche]

Saw the vid from WorthABuy and was impressed by the originality of the game's concept.

Some thoughts on your matter here from a hobbyist designer, in case this is still an issue:

What about simply making broken bits get repaired over time (pretty quickly but only one at a time) when they are in the ship? Could make it so that healthy bits are prioritized for deployment, that way it would only start hampering the game if you mis-manage your bits (by continuously deploying them at crappy locations). Could even make it so that you can deploy half-repaired bits just fine, but their endurance will obviously be lower then.

Taking away health from the ship for picking up broken bits is just counter-intuitive and makes the purpose of health questionable (is it a status meter? is it a resource?). It will always confuse the first-time player unless you find a way to communicate really well that broken bits will damage the ship. You also have to consider what happens when the ship is very low on HP, you don't want a player to die because he did what the game stimulates (picking up and redeploying bits).

Honestly, if you think about it, the fact that a broken bit is not doing anything useful is already a cost on its own, the only problem is that the cost is the same for a bit that has succesfully cleared an area (doesn't do anything useful), something that should somehow reward the player because it indicates that the player did well.

[Sideshowjim]

Thanks <--Archer-<< for the kind words. Thats an interesting Idea, This actually is still a bit of a debate between us so this definitely gives us another idea to test out. We just haven't found the right balance there so we settled on your penalty is that if a bit dies it's not cleaning and the virus can spread. So we will take a look into this idea and see how it works out. Thanks again

[Avalanche]

You're welcome, best of luck on the game!

[Squirrel_Whirl]

The Bit Healing could only use your shield energy.

Healing a Bit in your ship would drain your shields, and
when your shields go down, any further shield energy would go towards healing bits,
instead of putting your shields back up.

...Might be a feature for the hardest difficulty. This would make the game too harsh for the lower difficulties.

Ooo! What about an option to Flash the Bios of one of those, I forget their names, to turn them into a Bit Healing Station? you could Beam broken bits into it, and it will heal the bits
faster than the ship can. (going with <--Archer-<<'s idea).
The Bit Healing Station could even launch the fully healed bits up and towards a nearby ground virus spread (If there is one). The Bit would bring out its propeller for a slow descent toward the virus spot.
If the virus isn't nearby, the Bit Healing Station will bring the healed Bit above it, much like a Bit Maker does with a newly made Bit.


Or, how about using the current Health option for the secondary makers. If you have injured bits in your Ship, and your health is full (or the Health would go over the max limit), you could beam the Health which will heal the bits according to the amount of healing left.

[Sideshowjim]

That's a neat idea Koah take the energy from your shields leaving you vulnerable while picking up a dead bit. The blank maker stuff I fear would slow the game down too much having to go back and forth between them to heal the bits. Thanks for the ideas :-D

[Squirrel_Whirl]

You're welcome, Sideshowjim.

...I keep wanting to call you SLIDEshowjim... must be from the many powerpoints school has a person make.

[Sideshowjim]

Well my name is Simpson's based on my favorite character and needs to have more episodes SIdeshowBob, Rakes are my worst enemy and Bart. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WZLJpMOxS4