Hi, this is Mark Brown with Game Maker's Toolkit, a series on video game design.
Games have a history of toying with time. Like replaying the same three days in Majora's
Mask, working alongside a past version of yourself in The Talos Principle, or stopping
time by standing still in the innovative shooter, Superhot.
But I've been playing a quirky new sci-fi game called Nova-111 which does something
with time that I don't think I've ever seen done before. And not only that, the game provides
three important lessons for game designers.
So, Nova-111 is typically a turn-based game, where you and your enemies hop from grid square
to grid square in deliberate turns.
But some elements of the game work in real-time. Bash this gelatinous blob, for example, and
a timer will start ticking down. If you don't defeat the gooey sphere before the timer hits
zero, it will split into two.
Here's why this is interesting. In fact, let me show you the exact moment that made me
realise that this game had potential, and also make a weird sort of "ah!" noise.
These beak-faced enemies only move when you do. These stalactites work in real-time, and
will fall when disrupted. So when these two elements are combined, I can drop the stalactite on
the enemy's head. An enemy, which is powerless to move out of the way.
That's exciting because it's not just two systems coming together. It's two different
genres. And that's the first lesson: even the most disparate of genres can work together.
Even something as oxymoronic as a turn-based real-time game.
That is, if the genres complement each other in interesting ways. So in Nova-111, you can
use elements from one genre to attack enemies that work in the other. You can lead a turn-based
enemy into the path of a bullet that's moving in real time, or into the blast radius of
an explosive enemy that will detonate outside of the turn order.
But it comes at a cost: the real-time enemies often make you act recklessly. Turn-based
games, of course, let you carefully plan your next move, and the two or three after that
as well. Real time games are all about reacting. These two genres tug on very different parts
of your brain, which is why I can love turn-based strategy games, but simply can't deal with
real-time strategy games that are more complicated than something like Plants vs Zombies.
So when you get get caught up by the Latch, which restricts your movement and saps your
health every few seconds. Or when you walk into a bomb or a fire that will detonate or
spread in real time, you have to throw all that careful planning out the window and act
on instinct. Which often puts you in the middle of a group of enemies that you now have to
fight from a unfavourable position.
And these enemy dispensers, which spit out new foes in real time, force you to keep moving
when you might want to stop and take a breather. This allows Nova-111 to swing from the deliberate
pacing of a game like 868-Hack, to the more manic speed of a game like Crypt of the Necrodancer.
You too get to manipulate time in this game. You can stop time for a few seconds and then
move around between turns, which is handy for combat as you can push frozen enemies
around. And essential for some puzzles, as you slip by patrolling robots.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Nova-111 is that, like Lara Croft's bra size, this
genre mash-up was the result of a programming accident that the designers decided to keep.
Funktronic Labs's Eddie Lee told me that the game was being made as a traditional turn-based
dungeon crawler. But then a bug crept into the code, and an enemy started moving around
between turns. Instead of fixing the error, the team embraced it and built an entire game
around it.
Being open to the serendipitous discoveries of game development is lesson two: Lee says
that during creation, "you'll encounter wonderful things that will completely change the course
of your game. It's really scary because you can't plan for it, but also beautiful in its
own way".
Not everything will work, of course. The team tried enemies that worked completely in real-time,
and scrapped those due to balance. And the spacecraft also had a fuel tank which drained
in real time, but was removed because it never gave players time to sit back and think on
their next move.
But not every decision in the game is successful. These Blinkers, for example, leave tiny real-time
bombs when they teleport, but there's no reason why you'd ever fly into one. They feel like
a left-over from when that draining fuel tank was forcing you to move fast.
Plus, those oh-so enticing attacks where you wipe out turn-based enemies with another foe's
real-time attack are disappointingly limited, and rarely encouraged. And as we discussed
in the video on The Swindle, players must be rewarded or forced to do something risky
and fun, or they'll do something easy and boring.
So those environmental kills might be more powerful, but the game's so easy that they're
not advantageous . And there are no enemies that can only be killed with real-time attacks,
which would force you to engage with the game's clever strategies.
And there are just too many sections in the game that make no use of the real-time elements.
Puzzles about polarity switching buttons and robots that block lasers which are good,
but have little to do with Nova-111's central idea.
And without smart execution, a good idea is just a good idea. This game sounds great in
press releases and elevator pitches, but it doesn't stick the landing. Nova-111 is certainly
enjoyable, but it fails to capitalise on what made it so interesting.
Call it a gimmick or call it a main mechanic - it doesn't matter, if something is at the
beating heart of your game it needs to shine through in every aspect. It needs to adapt
and mutate, and make players completely reinvent the way they think. And that's lesson three.
Thanks so much for watching. You can find all the places to buy Nova-111, if you want
to see it for yourself, in the description below. Also, please give the episode a thumbs
up, subscribe to the channel, and consider supporting me on Patreon.