Design Questions

1. What types of challenges do you want to include in your game? Do you want to challenge the player’s physical abilities, his mental abilities, or both?


Both physical and mental challenges will be present. The challenges will be: Enemies, Doors/Switches, Exploration, Memorization, Platforming.

2. Game genres are defined in part by the nature of the challenges they offer. What does your choice of genre imply for the gameplay? Do you intend to include any cross-genre elements, challenges that are not normally found in your chosen genre?


The challenges will take cues from platforming games, as well as action games. Pretty standard fair for an action-adventure game. 


3. What is your game’s hierarchy of challenges? How many levels do you expect it to have? What challenges are typical of each level?


The game will take place over one large world, divided into 4 sub-sectors. The player will only be able to progress to new areas of the world as they gain new skills, so there is still a linear progression. 


4. What are your game’s atomic challenges? Do you plan to make the player face more than one atomic challenge at a time? Are they all independent, like battling enemies one at a time, or are they interrelated, like balancing an economy? If they are interrelated, how?


At most, the player will be fighting enemies, platforming, and puzzle solving simultaneously, but only at the most hectic moments of the game. The challenges are basically independent though.


5. Does the player have a choice of approaches to victory? Can he decide on one strategy over another? Can he ignore some challenges, face others, and still achieve a higher-level goal? Or must he simply face all the game’s challenges in sequence?


The player progresses linearly, having to overcome the area of the world they are currently in before moving on to the next one. Inside of an area though, the player is free to explore at their own will. 
6. Does the game include implicit challenges (those that emerge from the design), as well as explicit challenges (those that you specify)?


The overarching goal of the game is implied at the beginning, then hinted at through level design and enemy type as the player progresses. There will be no explicit goals, to make the game feel more open and encourage exploration. 


7. Do you intend to offer settable difficulty levels for your game? What levels of intrinsic skill and stress will each challenge require?


I didn't plan on implementing difficulty levels, but it would be easy to vary the damage taken by the player to accomplish this. 


8. What actions will you implement to meet your challenges? Can the player surmount a large number of challenges with a small number of actions? What is the mapping of actions to challenges?


The player will unlock 3 different weapon types, as well as the ability to double jump. The three different weapon types will do different things to the world and to enemies. Any more than three weapons and it turns into redundant gun porn (which is fine, but not fitting of an adventure game) Most of the actions will have a single use, but some will have multiple uses. 


9. What other actions will you implement for other purposes? What are those purposes—unstructured play, creativity and self-expression, socialization, story participation, or controlling the game software?


The player may deformate the world, perhaps blow up a wall here and there. Other than that, nothing else. 


10. What save mechanism do you plan to implement? 


Saving will automatically be done at checkpoints (which are also your respawn points). Checkpoints are activated by the player, and only 1 can be active at a time.