Increasing and rewarding intrigue in flick-screen game design

[jetsetdanny]

On 2/13/2023 at 6:24 AM, Sendy The Endless said:

And to be honest, I don't consider save states/rollbacks cheating, they've been a main part of modern games ever since, what, Wolfenstein 3D? Excluding long plodding adventure games where you could save off your progress because the game is so long (that usually took time) - the ability to jump back in time and redo something in an instant has just made games more playable to more people.

(...)

And I had an absolute blast playing We Pretty and Goodnite Luddite with savestates. It's like rock-climbing. Each stavestate is a new safety cable, and the rest is sheer force of will to inch upwards : )

Great discussion! 🙂 

I will just add to the bit quoted above that in the Readme accompanying "Goodnite Luddite" Andrew Broad says,

"You can consider yourself to have passed Goodnite Luddite if you finish the game using infinite lives (POKE 35899,0) on a real Spectrum, or saving and loading snapshots on an emulator. If you cheat by using any other POKEs, or by using WRITETYPER, you should consider yourself disqualified. ;-)"

So the author himself states that playing this particular game by saving and loading snapshots is NOT cheating, but a valid method of completing it. This is (that's my comment) because the game is designed to be so hard it would be unrealistic to expect people to finish it without this kind of help (or the infinite lives POKE). He also establishes the same "rules of engagement" for some of his other games, e.g. "Party Willy".

[IRF]

I think Andrew's policy is spot on. To take an extreme example of how a no-Pokes-are-off-limits approach amounts to cheating, if you load up Jet Set Willy and Poke the game mode indicator with a value of 2, Willy will immediately run from the bath to the toilet - game technically 'completed' in a matter of seconds! But with no sense of accomplishment or explanation.

Edited August 24, 2023 by IRF

[Jet Set Willie]

17 hours ago, Sendy The Endless said:

Danny's just stating what he prefers, and how he thinks.  I can see his reasoning - you make a nice room, give the player a reason to go there.

Yes, I understood that. 🙂 I meant to point out, that anybody wanting to make a JSW game, should read this topic through and to take all the comments into account, but not necessarily to obey them. 😉 Otherwise we might not see some interesting rooms 🙂 as somebody might obey the "rules" too strictly, fearing the others may not accept the game with "unwanted" features.

[IRF]

On 2/13/2023 at 11:24 AM, Sendy The Endless said:

No, these are exactly the kinds of discussions I was hoping for. Not to find out who's right, but to see things from other people's perspective (and show mine)!

There are a million different ways to approach designing a game, even within the realm of what's possible in base-game JSW. That's what makes it interesting, we're all building ships in the same little "bottle".

To go all 'meta' for a moment, there may even be people who find discussions like these (about what different people's perspectives are of the most interesting aspects of JSW gaming) to be more interesting than playing, designing or hacking JSW games! 🤪

[jetsetdanny]

Everything is possible in the 'meta' world! Even Facebook turned to Meta, hasn' it? 😉

[Sendy The Endless]

All platforms seem to be turning to 💩

Apart from the ones in platform games 🙃

[MtM]

On 2/17/2023 at 3:08 PM, Sendy The Endless said:

All platforms seem to be turning to 💩

Apart from the ones in platform games 🙃

I agree about the platforms. Games have gone the way of films, big sequels, franchises, it doesn't excite me like it used to do. Oh well.

[Sendy The Endless]

19 hours ago, MtM said:

I agree about the platforms. Games have gone the way of films, big sequels, franchises, it doesn't excite me like it used to do. Oh well.

I don't think we've changed, the media landscape has. Take some comfort in that. People know things aren't right anymore. Enjoy Coke. 👽