Games Design Talk by Venezia Georgieva (Venny)

Game Overview – Short description of game

Guidelines:

• Action – focus
• 30 second rule
• Every word matters
• Iteration is key

Everything should be short and snappy

Maybe don’t put title in overview? Redundant

Structure for overview?

• Opening hook
• Evoke imagery of the game, don’t be passive, world, action, fantasy
• What is your game promising the player that would make them care

Game Design Pillars

How to use Pillars:

• To maintain the game vision
  • Help to judge if every idea we have is a good idea for your game, and isn’t just a good idea

• To determine features
  • Every feature you are considering for your game must contribute to at least one game pillar, and shouldnt contradict

Making pillars:

• 3 – 6 pillars
• Title + description
  • + 1 to 2 supporting sentences to ensure alignment
• Continuous adaptation
  • Pillars should be re-reviewed often

Further guidelines for pillars:

• Avoid genre pillars
  • Simply stating genre
  • Doesn’t provide valuable insight
• Reverse the pillar
  • If you can reverse the meaning and it still sounds like something a game would want to do, then its a good pillar
• Avoid tech pillars
  • Frame rate, bug free, specific platforms
  • Doesnt help with design

Game Loops

• Chains of repeatable actions that for the flow of the players experience

Loops by style

• Core game loops
  • Core mechanics, decisions, shorter term goals, player repeats these hopes multiple times to make permanent progress
  • In Hades 2, defeating enemies and advancing through levels
• Meta game loops
  • Repeatable actions, long term progression, motivations systems, feature including, story progress
  • In Hades 2, upgrading abilities, unlocking new weapons
• Making Loops:
  • Player actions in the order they take place
  • Resource flow if game has them
    • Resources player is gaining or losing through actions
  • Add icon to resources
• Loops by time
  • Second to second
    • In Astrobot, Navigate the level, avoid or battl enemies
  • Minute to minute
    • In Astrobot, Rescue bots , unlock new levels
  • Hour to hour
    • Find ship parts, improve tab planet, unlock galaxies

Key takeaways

• Game overviews are action focused
• Pillars are guiding lights
• Map actions and resources in loops

In this talk, I learnt how to structure my game pitch so that it appealed to more people and how important it can be to perfect this, as it can impact game sales massively.

Considering the game pillars also helped me to consider the story elements of my game more as i realised that so far i only really had the mechanics worked out. I decided that the story is about a world that has lost all visuals and sound, and it is your job as The Soundpainter to add sounds back into the world so people can navigate the space again.

Here are my game pillars so far, although as mentioned in the talk, i will likely iterate on them later on as my game concept/vision gets stronger

First Draft of Pillars for “The Soundpainter”:

• Gameplay without visuals
  • This game is screen-less, just headphones and a controller.
• Map/ Navigate the world with sound
  • You, as The Soundpainter have the ability to attach sound to objects which can help you find your way around and ‘paint’ the environment in the way that works for you
• Help your fellow people to navigate this new environment
  • Interact with NPCs and complete puzzles to help your community and progress with the story
• Explore in your own way
  • Open world, puzzles have multiple solutions

Venny looked through my pillars and said that the first three were strong but the fourth one wasn’t as clear, which i agree with.

Mason helped to make my pillars more concise as we both agreed certain bits could be cut out as there were repetitions.

Second draft of Pillars for “The Soundpainter”:

• Gameplay without visuals:
  • This game is screen-less, just headphones and a controller
• Map the world with sound
  • You, as The Soundpainter have the ability to attach sounds to objects or ‘paint’ the environment
• Solve puzzles to help NPCs
  • Encounter characters and complete unique tasks to help your community
• Catch sounds and store them for later
  • Catch Soundbugs with your net and store them to use as tools in future puzzles

A follow up to this task was to consider the game loop and i realised that i didn’t have much of an idea of the actual game part, other than there would be no visuals. I think considering a game loop as my next task will help me to develop my pitch.