Kill Ten Rats

Since we’re on the subject of other gaming genres, I wanted to point out Shootmania Storm with a killer announcement trailer. It’s a first-person shooter (FPS) which is built in the vein of pure arena FPS like Quake 3 Arena or Unreal Tournament. The palette is pretty pure with hit counts instead of health, recharge instead of ammo, and a sprint. Yet, when the gameplay is so focused it still retains very tight variants.

The recent E3 tournament focused around a variant called Elite. It’s 3v3 attack/defend except each round is actually 1 elite vs. 3 defenders. The elite gets 3 armors and an insta-kill rail gun, and the defenders get no extra armor and a slower moving rocket launcher with small splash damage. Defenders can fire off 4 rockets at once, while the elite’s rail gun has a couple second recharge between each shot. The elite has about 45 seconds to scout the flagpole capture point and then about 15 seconds to capture the flag. If the elite gets eliminated (3 rocket hits) or the defenders all die (one rail gun hit each) the round can also be over. It’s a really nice twist on arena gameplay, which requires very high skill.

My favorite announced variant is Joust, which is a 1v1 map with two opposing capture points. Each player has limited ammo (5 shots or so) that can only be refilled at the capture points along with a rail gun with one shot. Points are gained per hit. I’ve heard in other previews that if a player doesn’t touch a capture point within 30 seconds the match is lost. The announcement trailer showcases another variant which seems more akin to team deathmatch with capture points.

Just like Nadeo’s Trackmania series, Shootmania Storm will have easy map-making tools, scripting tools for servers, and ‘casting/machinimas capabilities. It’s slated for release later this year, but you can sign up for beta now. It’s got me pretty excited.

–Ravious

Regular readers know that I love little differences with big effects. Elegance in design is a thing of beauty, and tracing the secondary effects of a small change can yield big results.

Our friend Tesh has a good example with critical hits in Zomblobs! (under development):

Criticals in Zomblobs! happen when all of the dice you roll show the same number. … Most curiously, these criticals are easier to score the fewer dice you roll. Weaker attacks have greater potential to hit a little bigger. This particular “crit” design is therefore more of an “underdog” mechanism, rather than a “win more” mechanism. Instead of harder hits probably hitting even harder, it’s the weak hits that are most likely to slip in a little extra punch.

Simple, elegant, effective. On the other side, it reminds me of the old World of Darkness botch mechanic. Under the previous generation of their system, 1s cancelled out successes, and having negative successes led to a critical failure. Higher skill gave you more dice to roll, and higher difficulty meant needing a higher number to succeed. The net effect was that, for very difficult tasks, having more dice meant a greater botch chance. In some sense, this made sense. If you are an utter novice, it is hard to get far enough in to really mess things up; it is the middling-low range of competence that is really dangerous. On the other hand, you can see the statistical perversity of a system where getting better can hurt you. The designers there did not have the numeracy and/or interest to trace through the effects of their system.

: Zubon

I finally booted up LIMBO yesterday, inspired by the Humble Bundle. I would not recommend it. If I may refer back to a recent post, if the first things people praise about a game are its mood and atmosphere, you should immediately note that “gameplay” is not at the top of the list.

The mood and atmosphere are good, though broken at the mid-point. Continue reading LIMBO

Amnesia, Limbo, Psychonauts, and Superbrothers, plus Bastion as a bonus game, plus all their soundtracks. Heck, I own four of those, and I’m considering picking it up.

: Zubon