Earlier this week I released an episode of Game Maker’s Toolkit about how designers
push you to try more interesting gameplay styles - and how those decisions can be met
with controversy when the game forces you to play in a specific way, or punishes you
for not meeting the creator’s vision.
I got loads of great comments on that video, with many of them focused on XCOM 2’s design choices.
A quick reminder to get everyone up to speed. XCOM Enemy Unknown was awesome, but Firaxis
wasn’t happy with the fact that players were approaching the game slowly and cautiously.
They thought the game was more interesting when the player was faster and took more risks.
So, for the sequel, XCOM 2, the studio put a timer on many of the missions, so if you
take too many turns, you’ll fail the main objective. This certainly did the job, but
it was met with no small amount of controversy. Lots of players just didn’t like being rushed
by the game.
Anyway. Lots of people in the comments pointed out that there’s actually a number of tactical
games out there that have found clever ways to encourage players into speeding up, without
completely annoying them.
And so, in this cheeky bonus video, I want to give a shoutout to these games and take
a look at their unique solution to this tricky design problem.
Let’s start with Invisible Inc, which is by Klei Entertainment - the same studio as
Mark of the Ninja. This game is heavily inspired by XCOM but has more of a focus on stealth
and espionage. So in each mission you’ll be sneaking past guards, hacking into cameras,
and pinching valuable secrets.
Technical Designer James Lantz told Gamasutra, “We knew we needed [a] sense of time pressure
for Invisible, not only because it fit the game’s theme but also because we wanted
players to be making interesting tradeoffs with every move, and keeping busywork to a
minimum”.
Basically, the studio was looking for high stakes break-ins, where you’d have to make
the tough choice between robbing a few more safes or booking it towards the exit.
The solution was a security system. Every single turn, the system ticks up one notch.
And every five notches, a new level of security is introduced. Maybe new cameras come online,
or it becomes more expensive to hack things, or additional guards are introduced.
So it’s still a turn timer, just like XCOM 2, but the consequences for taking too long
are nowhere near as severe. It’s not a fail state - it just ramps up the challenge. In
fact, it can be kind of fun, because these extra security measures can add surprising
new wrinkles to mess up your plan.
The alarm system still was met with some resistance, but Lantz says “we were able to ameliorate
the issue by providing lots of in-world fiction for the alarm and making it very clear and
predictable to players with extra UI and tutorialization, including the small but incredibly effective
change of renaming it from ‘Alarm’ to ‘Security Level’.”
Okay, so the next example comes from Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. This is another
XCOM-style game, only this time with the surprising inclusion of, uh, Super Mario and those annoying
Rabbids from the Rayman games.
So in this game, you’re basically just graded on your performance in each battle - with
the game noting down how many team members made it out alive, and how many turns you
took compared to a par time.
And then, at the end of the chapter, you’ll be rewarded with a trophy and - more importantly
- coins based on your performance. So finishing missions within a smaller number of turns
rewards you with handy goodies. Which is cool.
It certainly doesn’t put any pressure on the player, though. And that’s maybe something
I should have addressed in my original video. Rewarding players for being fast is one way
of doing things, but it’s fundamentally a different experience to feeling the pressure
of death looming over your head if you don’t speed up - which is why systems like the rebel
fleet following you in FTL are still extremely worthwhile.
But stress is not really the aim of a game like Mario and Rabbids. The game does want
you to be fast and mobile, but it achieves this just by giving you lots of fun and powerful
tools for zipping around the battlefield, like how you can get big damage from sliding
into enemies, or cover huge amounts of ground by bouncing off other team members.
The coin reward for finishing within fewer turns is just an extra incentive for playing in
a bouncy, zippy Mario-like way.
Okay, so the final example comes from another very XCOM-like game... uh, XCOM! Enemy Within,
that is, which is the expansion pack for the original Enemy Unknown.
Not the original original. You know what I mean.
So, Firaxis was thinking about encouraging speed back during the development of this
DLC. Enemy Within lead designer Ananda Gupta told Eurogamer, "We really felt players were
having fun with the tactical game, but we felt like, especially on the harder difficulty
levels, heavily conservative play was being rewarded. There's nothing wrong with heavily
conservative play - that's fine - but we wanted to make it so that it wasn't a no-brainer”.
So in this expansion, you’ve got all these cool new toys to play with like mech walkers
and genetic upgrades to create ridiculous super soldiers. And this useful junk is all
purchased with a new currency, called Meld.
Now this stuff is found on the battlefield of many of the game’s missions, in Meld
Canisters. And this is where the time pressure comes in. As soon as you spot one of these
things, they start a self destruct sequence. If you get to the canister in time you can
take the currency home with you. If not, the meld is lost.
These meld containers provide a reward for taking risks, and a certain level of pressure
as the timer ticks down, but speeding up is optional and the punishment for running out
of time is a missed opportunity - not a completely failed mission.
I think this is a pretty great piece of design, but I’m not trying to say that these games
are necessarily better than XCOM 2, or that these designs are “right” and the more simple turn timers
are “wrong”. But it’s just interesting to look at some other ways that designers
have attempted the same idea - but in a unique way.
And, often, with less backlash. But not zero backlash - Invisible Inc’s James Lantz admits
“there are definitely players we lost along the way with the alarm system”. Though
Klei does let you turn the whole system off, from a generous menu of options and modifiers.
But, that’s a whole ‘nother topic.
For now, thank you so much watching and thank you for your comments. I try to read as many as
I can, and all your feedback helps make the show better and more informative. Without
you, a bonus episode like this just wouldn’t exist. See you soon.