i was just watching a lets play of metroid Zero mission, the gameboy advanced remake of the original metroid game, when it occurred to me that there are a couple of very simple additions that audio games could cinclude which would greatly enhance gameplay, additions that made games like zelda and the metroid series famous.
Ignoring the 2D aspect (which we've discussed before), there is the basic formular of such games, a formular that would translate just as well into for instance an fps game. Your in a large, freely explorable maze full of monsters. you have one infinitely useable main weapon (the metroid gun or Link's sword in the Zelda games), which starts off comparatively weak. As you progress through the maze you will come to areas which you cannot pass without a given item, and items which you can use to pass certain areas, ---- often requiring you to take note of areas you've passed and go back. "oh, so that special gun upgrade blows up brick walls, ---- now where did I pass a brick wall before?" So collecting these key items and using them to expand the parts of the maze you can get to forms the bulk of the game, ---- especially sinse of course there are large and nasty boss monster to be killed along the way. In addition to your main weapon, You also have some limited use more powerfull items, and scattered around the maze are expantion packs for those items, items that let you hold more energy when you start, items that let you have more amo for limited use items etc. These expantions are scattered around the maze, often in far out of the way places requiring lots of exploring to find, and it's fully expected that a player won't find all of them on their first run through the game. All of these items are in fixed places rather than appearing at random, sinse it is the players' ability to systematically explore the maze, perhaps passing puzzles along the way that will determine how many expantion items she/he collects, perhaps with a reward for collecting all of them, making this a game where you have to try, and learn, and progress, rather than wait to be randomly lucky with a monster drop for your items. An engine like that employed in shades of doom could well include these sorts of gameplay elements, indeed there's no reason why they haven't been used in an audio game thus far, accept that from what I can gather the fps titles we've had have tended to be based on randomly occurring items and fast action, rather than acquiring more and more items and making your character more powerful as time passes, which is a shame, sinse the exploration formular is one which is hugely rewarding to play. the only audio games I think that have come close to this sort of formular are Airic the clerric (though I don't think Airik had any none usefull items or expantions to collect that weren't really part of the progression of the game), sarah, (though there you didn't really grow more powerfull rather than complete puzzles), and I believe kurt wolf. But perhaps this is something Phil, Tom, Aprone, and other of our devs could considder as a design point, ---- sinse if the game has many items and a complex map structure, exploration and gradual acquisition of both key items and items providing extra power can actually be as much if not more fun than randomly occurring ones. All the best, Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
