Post by Melos Han-Tani in [003] Shuffled World Devlog comments

Viewing post in [003] Shuffled World Devlog comments

Thank you for writing! I appreciate you engaging with the design ideas here. I sort of got distracted with other stuff and stuck again, so I haven't thought much about the design of this project (although the story and themes are always on my mind).

I agree with you in that it'd be nice if a significant part of the game is the 'engagement with the world'... I wonder how to balance that. In my experience I've personally had a hard time in balancing games with two big 'systems' (in this case, mapping and exploration). Either one gets cut or they end up existing a bit independently (e.g. Sephonie's Linking/Platforming) But maybe it's a challenge worth approaching.

It's frustrating to not have many game reference points to go on. The closest thing to the 'trial and error' I can think of is Mu Cartographer - really interesting game, basically it's a procedural world you navigate by twisting strange knobs, and you can find treasure in the noise. https://store.steampowered.com/app/513360/Mu_Cartographer/ Of course, that game is pretty different in design goals from what I have in mind, but it feels like somewhat of a proof of concept that 'experimental exploration' could be fruitful.

Real life has a lot of great analogies with the game, now that I think about it - often google maps is just 90% and the rest is having to improvise based on street/outside conditions, street signs. Paths to a place are full of things that you didn't expect, pleasant surprises... hm.

The idea about having 'partial undo' items is really good, it definitely feels important for the exploration to be open to experimentation, rather than punishing for failure. Sort of like how Mu Cartographer lets you know when you're kinda close to a treasure, and you can keep unadjusting/adjusting knobs as needed.

Your comment also gives me an idea about 'solutions' to maps... sort of inspired by 'closeness' in things like recommendation engines, maybe the path to a treasure merely needs to be 'close' to the ideal solution (the analogy would be like, a game that's a 90% "match" to Anodyne 2). I kind of like that, it might even fit with the theming of the story.

I wonder how the exploration (on a granular basis) would stay engaging, but with a game like Yume Nikki in mind, maybe filling rooms with strange sights and characters is enough? I guess this is a case where overthinking things would lead to perfunctory design (e.g. if it was combat-based, and I had to kill enemies with a Red Weapon to get to a Red Room... etc).

Thanks for writing your thoughts on the themes! While I plan to use the visual language of 'towns', this very much is a story that's thinking more about subcultures and types creative circles. I'm glad to hear that it sounds resonant so far!

Like you bring up with the internet, I guess this game is quite inspired by the experience of living on the internet.. ending up in strange places with surprising ideas, meeting or observing people with totally different interests and priorities is in general an enriching way to live, I feel. Actually, there's an old story/game idea (that's a partial inspiration for Shuffled World) I had that's basically analogizing discord servers and their relative isolation and connection. The way that 'invite codes' are sort of like these special passwords or tunnels to different 'discord worlds', etc.

Anyways, time will tell if I manage to work on any of this stuff but I'm glad that these posts are interesting as-is!

Rhea1 year ago(+1)

Thanks for responding, I’m glad my comment gave you some things to think about!

Mu Cartographer is a very cool example, I think part of what makes it work (at least from a distance, having not played it) is the visual spectacle of the generated landscape. Very much feels like someone was playing with landscape generation and thought “How can I make this game?”. I think it adds credence to the question “Would exploration feel engaging just from interesting visuals?”. I’m a huge fan of Yume Nikki and that type of exploration and I think there’s very enjoyable on it’s own to be in a world of the wondrous and unexpected. There is a bit of concern with same rooms appearing too often and loosing their novelty, but I think that could be solved by giving some rooms small pattern requirements (Valley room next to two desert rooms or something like that) so they have “identity” and are a bit more rare, as well as some rooms that are just rare in general. I think ideally with the right amount of variety, repeated rooms could become comfortably familiar, instead of tired.

My gut does still say there could be something more, some way to get that “balance”… It’s a tricky question and might just require some trial and error prototyping (unfortunately time consuming!). Maybe like Mu Cartographer, you could have some sort of sensor that tells you how close you are to completing the pattern. Could give that fun sensation of: “Agh, I’m so close, but where is it!”. And yeah, I like the idea of giving some flexibility on meeting the “correct” solution, would definitely take some strain off of repeating attempts!

Anyway, I love to read about designers’ thought processes so posts like these are very much appreciated. It’s a huge challenge to ‘map’ out (haha) relatively unexplored areas of design, so its really interesting to see how people grapple with those unanswered questions and think about all the possibilities. I wish you luck working on this idea and others!

Melos Han-Tani1 year ago

Thank you! I wrote a new post in this devlog series. Your thoughts were very helpful! Maybe I have something prototypable now.. https://han-tani.itch.io/shuffled-world-codename/devlog/498463/004-shuffled-worl...