thread: 2011-02-21 : Into the Unknown?
On 2011-03-01, Vincent wrote:
Hooray! I can keep "profit from solving it" in mind as we go. Just remind me if it becomes clear I've forgotten.
Okay! So that's what we're here to do, overall.
a) Is it fun enough? Does your audience WANT to do that?
Of course you can always say that your audience is people who want to do that, so yes, they do. Is that as big an audience as you hope for? Are you putting yourself in competition with games they already have? Will your game give it to them in a way, with a purity or clarity or beauty, that they can't already get elsewhere? I have no answers to these questions. Your guess is as good as mine, and if you've done any research or observation or analysis, way better than mine.
Me personally, since Brand mentions it, I'm not automatically attracted to this, the way I would be to "GM, you're to create a weird problem and not worry whether it has any solution at all, that's the players' business. If they can't come up with one, it goes unsolved, and no skin off YOUR nose." But I'm not hostile to it either, by any stretch, and there's plenty you could do to win me over.
b) Now we talk about what we do right now. There are two considerations: what's the distance, and what are the connections?
Distance: in Chess, I can't put your king in checkmate with my opening move. I can't drop my queen into a space next to him and announce that oh by the way she's unkillable. Things stand between me at my opening position and my victory (or my defeat): how the pieces move, how they capture, how we alternate turns, the rules for check and checkmate.
Connections: at the same time, it's obvious how the moves I make build, over the course of the game, INTO my victory or defeat. I can see that moving my pieces according to the rules, turn by turn, is how I move through the distance between my starting position and my goal. At every step, I can see my goal as a landmark, like, and judge (within my skill to judge) whether I'm moving toward it or away from it, and decide how to best pursue it right now.
Same thing in your game, and here's my proposal. If you want your game to catch on, what you want is a navigable, fathomable distance, and clear connections, like Chess has.
With me so far?
