Our game is going to be asymmetric. We're having the defensive side of the game completely different from the offensive side. The defensive hero will have powers that the offensive side does not have and the offensive side will have numbers that the defensive side does not. Either side will have separate goals but we'll work hard to make them balanced.
I think a way that we will be able to address challenge vs. success is through having many successive waves of enemies that get more difficult with time. A way to keep people from getting bored is by having the easier waves go by quicker and the more challenging levels will take a little more time.
There will be a whole lot of meaningful choices the player can make when it comes to spending resources, upgrading defenses and where the player focuses the ability of the main character. Strategy will also be a choice the player always has to pay attention to when it comes to strengthening defenses or attacking from different angles.
I think we'll be able to minimize the amount of chance that governs our game. Enemies will probably attack with a random number of damage within a range, but everything else can be basically predictable. The point of our game is more to prepare for attackers and reward good preparation, skill and strategy.
Our plan is not to have too much dexterity based game play. We don't want the object to get good at quickly pressing buttons, although it will probably come into play. Our focus is on the strategic elements and on rewarding preparedness.
We're planning on not actually making a set end in our game. We're going to cater to the people who like to grind and gain experience and test their ability arcade-style. We're going to have wave after wave until they give up or lose. In that way the length of the game is chosen by the player. Games like candy crush and other arcades carefully balance reward and give the right amount of incentive to make the player want to play more.
When the book talks about the reward of prolonged play, that seems to fit with our game pretty well. Other rewards we offer include points for using on more upgrades and more powers and access to more difficult competition.
One aspect of our game that we just added is when the player loses on one side of the fight, they then get switched to the other side to fight in the opposite direction. We want to encourage the player to stay with one side as long as they can so when they die, there is a point dock and they have to work to get back to the same position. There will also probably be a timing setback, so a loss will cause you to be out of the fight for a certain amount of time.
We're going to try to offer as much freedom to the player as we can. This will include traveling anywhere within the game they need or want to, upgrading any building or defensive unit they want or getting whatever power or upgrade they want. We really don't plan on interfering with the player once the game begins outside of the normal game rules.
We haven't exactly taken complexity into account yet. We're hoping that our rules will be simple to get so that there will be very will explanation but that the game play will be complicated enough to be interesting for the player.
A lot of the advice we got this week when we presented was that we should keep the buildings and the aesthetics as simple as possible. We're probably going to simplify the world so that it's not so overwhelming but also so it leaves a little more to the imagination behind the scenes.
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