[SEMI-SANE] I did press it!

My concept for the monthly challenge is to mess with the player's head. The basic idea is a FPS view and you have to escape from a strange world with moving platforms and weird physics. And just to drive the player insane I intend to make the controls random(ish) and have strange things happen with platforms.

Not sure if this will work out the way I want it, but I'll make time to implement some stuff and see what happens.

Comments

  • Nice. Really really frustrating... but nice. Controls that don't react as expected could be a really great way of having the player feel insane - but it's a tightrope. Too much of it and the player will give up in frustration. Do you see it being random-random or appearing random with a pattern that can be deciphered if you persist?
  • @hanli, I agree completely. My initial idea was to switch the directions at random of moving forward and sideways. In other words, sometimes when you press forward it would go backwards. I think if I have the randomness appear in a pattern that can be deciphered it won't have the effect of insanity that I want, but making it completely random is also just silly. At the moment I'm considering to change the controls with specific events or at specific time intervals. Hopefully I can find the balance where it drives you insane but you still want to keep playing. We'll see what happens :)
  • Damn you for having my idea before I had it! :P

    We want to look at something similar in constraining movement, for very similar reasons. Not necessarily randomise controls, but have a non-trivial control scheme - so that the direction is predictable (like you clarified to hanli) but unexpected. So that the player has to focus to move in the direction that they need to, rather than what is naturalised.
  • edited
    mikegeyser said:
    So that the player has to focus to move in the direction that they need to, rather than what is naturalised
    Yes! I want to create that feeling of tension whenever you need to move. Not sure if whether what you are planning to do will actually happen.
  • Like QWOP and CLOP? :P Those games DEFINTITLY test your sanity points :) Imagine having those controls flipped from time to time. Whoa :) Or move the controls to other keys on the keyboard/buttons on the control. I think that's what being insane is like... Thinking/knowing you're doing one thing but the results just isn't what you thought they'd be...
  • @Tuism Weren't you showing that to people at the game jam? Although I just attributed my memory of it to some fatigue induced daydreaming nightmare..
  • He was, I was actually playing it :)
  • Yep I was showing people those two games. They were quite amazing successes and what I thought to be really really good game jamming that was eventually polished and put out. Well, at least I can't imagine that these were massive projects, you know? Foddy (that guy that made QWOP and CLOP) made a ton of little games, which is, I thought, great to learn from. http://www.foddy.net
  • edited
    Tuism said:
    Yep I was showing people those two games. They were quite amazing successes and what I thought to be really really good game jamming that was eventually polished and put out. Well, at least I can't imagine that these were massive projects, you know? qwertyuiop asdfghjkl
    Foddy (that guy that made QWOP and CLOP) made a ton of little games, which is, I thought, great to learn from.
    qwop is the hrdest game ever
Sign In or Register to comment.