A Dark Room - Awesome minimalist survival game
Go play it now:
http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
I recently found out about A Dark Room. It's really nicely done and surprisingly addictive, which is amazing considering it's nothing more than a bunch of numbers and progress bars. It does such a good job of conveying just the information you need and nothing more. I'm usually not a fan of minimal games but this one is so excellently done, I think it deserves a try.
There's a Lights Off mode at the bottom to change the colour scheme to dark, and putting on some http://www.rainymood.com/ in the background helps the atmosphere quite a bit.
The fire is roaring.
http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
I recently found out about A Dark Room. It's really nicely done and surprisingly addictive, which is amazing considering it's nothing more than a bunch of numbers and progress bars. It does such a good job of conveying just the information you need and nothing more. I'm usually not a fan of minimal games but this one is so excellently done, I think it deserves a try.
There's a Lights Off mode at the bottom to change the colour scheme to dark, and putting on some http://www.rainymood.com/ in the background helps the atmosphere quite a bit.
The fire is roaring.
Thanked by 1NickWiggill
Comments
(No I haven't finished it yet, but it does surprise in the same way as Candyland, which is also great!)
Right off the bat it strikes me as a Cookie Clicker style game.
We'll see how it progresses.
I wish there was a little more story in it. I guess that's after playing a bit of Sunless Sea I want that much detail in story in every text based game. I don't like that there's a lot of repetitiveness after the first 5 minutes, and the narrative content becomes sparser (I was really quite excited when I met the builder, but then she became a UI element instead of a story).
The rabbit hole goes WAY deep, but yes it becomes super repetitive, I'm not going to defend that about it, but it was a filler game that grew into something I really wanted to find out more about eventually.
I didn't get too far, though. Though there's no telling how far it does go.
Candyland yo, that was a good one too. Same feeling of discovery. I guess in that respect it can be compared to Frog Fractions. Which was way, way, better in presentation, of course.
Almost bit me as hard as my first experience here : codingame.com/home
Art is based on derivation after all (although that it a bit of a generalization)... just so long as it's not all too derivative.
Obviously I'm being facetious. But innovation often comes from trying to replicate an aspect of an existing product (like the compulsion loops of A Dark Room which @Nitrogen found so addicting) in a product that is otherwise different, particularly when those differences inspire new solutions to maintain the effect of the replicated aspect.
And for the purposes of learning, which is what I was suggesting @Nitrogen do, even full blown cloning wouldn't necessarily be a bad result, if it helped him understand what that "addictive essence" he was talking about was, and would allow him to produce that quality in future, more original, projects.
I guess what I'm trying to get across is that, as a game designer, "replicate" isn't a dirty word for me, particularly when regarding education. Games are complicated things and even the most original games tend to share a lot mechanical features with other games.
"Cloning" is a dirty word. But that implies wholescale theft of another game's design without changing anything. Which isn't what I suggested.
This is pretty much in every artform there is: Tolkien created the standard fantasy setting (pretty much), Hitchcock did countless things for film that had never been thought of before, Tezuka created the big manga eyes, ee cummings revolutionized freeform poetry and id created the first person shooter (more or less). So yes, innovation involves taking things that work and reusing them. With literary language it's called defamiliarization and I guess it's called other things in other sectors I know a lot less about... you know, like games development.
For the purpose of learning I agree with what you said. But I do feel that it may be a dangerous road to tread if one stated that someone should replicate anything, even if it isn't for commercial reasons. I feel that straight up copying a game to understand it (and how to create something similar) is absolutely fine... if never released; commercial or non-commercial. I feel like copying a game, or any other piece of art for that matter, is fine so long as there's never a chance of passing it off as your own.
To me they're synonyms, as I stated previously, but once again this boils down to semantics. Words can give off negative connotations without ever meaning to be taken in that way. So I do agree with what you say there, but I just don't like the use of those words. Clone, replicate, copy, steal, plagiarize, et cetera; they're all the same to me even if you never meant to use them in those ways.
1) The availability of several options at any time to spend currency on that further improve the player's ability to earn more currency. (This lets the player keep setting new immediate goals and new long term goals for themselves, and makes it hard for the player to break out of the overlapping loops).
2) The steady arrival of new surprising ways to spend currency to benefit the player. (This keeps the player curious, as the player expects new interesting abilities in the future. Again this keeps the player playing).
3) The cost of the upgrades, as well as the ability for the player to earn, escalates throughout the game. At first 20 currency is a lot, eventually 20000 currency is a lot. (This keeps the player in a state of feeling powerful. The escalation happens quickly enough that the player never normalizes).
There is a small amount of curiosity in A Dark Room that it's narrative generates. Though Cookie Clicker doesn't share this.
The point I'm making is that these are fairly abstract notions, with a fairly abstract goal (make the player feel addicted), the act of replicating this effect is comparable to replicating a sense of forboding in a film. Is it a dirty thing to say "I want to replicate the suspense of Hitchcock's The Birds in my film"?
Also, there are so many of these Cookie Clicker games now that they have a Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incremental_game
(A few years back they were quite a new thing)
In any case, I've meddled a little with incremental games, but not successfully. I'd like to give it a try again at some point.
After playing it for 5 minutes for me it seems this is the mystery of wanting to know what comes next, that hooks me.
I find cookie clicker mechanics works well in games, and too many developers bad mouth it due to many implementations of it done poorly. But it is a real fun way to start experimenting with game development since the mechanic is straight forward and it is up to you as developer to find that "yes just one more click" feeling...
It is a mechanics which you can easily build an engine on, and make many different iterations and stories with, perfect for experiments. Also a nice mechanic just to use as a mini game in a larger or different game.
http://www.nekogames.jp/g.html?gid=PRM
http://www.clickerheroes.com
I think I've spent about 20 hours on them in total, at which point I got angry at myself for continuing to want to play even though I knew I wasn't learning anything, wasn't really particularly enjoying myself, wasn't genuinely having fun, but still wanting to go back and click more. I've since tried to be much more aware of Skinner-box-like compulsion, and the moment I feel I'm playing more because of that than because of "real" enjoyment, I try to break away completely. I've found it to be much more useful as a player (who values his time) than as a game designer (who hopes to make games that measure success by "players touched" rather than "hours spent playing").
Giving this a go though, because I actually find the minimalism quite appealing. And also because @BlackShipsFilltheSky says he "finished" it, which means that it actually ends. (Many other clicker-styled games basically go on indefinitely.)
1. Feedback loop - Make money, to spend money, to make more money.
2. Incrementally uncovering the world - always new stuff to spend your money on.
3. Given long term goals - I wish I could afford that.
Being a visual person, I immediately think of ways to make it better by adding graphics. I know that minimalism works and that my imagination did most of the work while playing this which is a very good thing, but I just cant help the allure of those sweet sweet pixels.
The other area to explore is like mentioned above, adding more story elements, not just random events but actual plot points that progress the characters.
Definitely going on my "to code up one day" pile.
But graphics can be a kind of reward. Receiving good looking visual feedback can be yet another thing to look forward to and add some extra compulsion (e.g. windows solitaire). So giving in to your urge to make those sweet sweet pixels even sweeter could potentially be an effective way to differentiate yourself is a sea of minimalist incremental games. (Particularly if you do manage to make the game yet more addictive through graphics).
(I mean to say, if graphics are your passion (or one of your passions), there's probably room for innovating there).
That's the problem. If you're making pretty graphics for the sake of it - nothing wrong with that. So many great artists and gamemakers post their work here and I don't think there's anything wrong with it.
So it all depends on what you're focusing on. Acknowledge and stick to that :)
Monster Hunter - there's one of the most incremental games I know :) And Dragon's Dogma - you start off running away from giant Cyclops who'd one hit kill you. Eventually you walk past them and if they look at you wrong you slay them with a few slashes :)
NEVER MAKE GRAPHICS EVER! IF YOU DO, uh... SPIDERS WILL MAGICALLY STOP YOU AND ALL THE THINGS YOU'VE WORKED ON WILL CEASE TO EXIST!
Phew. You nearly made some graphics there. Glad we put an end to that :) That was close!
P.S. Thanks for the help, magical spiders of degaussing.
P.P.S. The magical spiders of degaussing, besides being super cute, would like to remind everyone that there's usually a lot more nuance and context to any advice about focusing too heavily on any aspect of game development, or the order of developing resources. The magical spiders of degaussing thank you for helping them PUT AN END TO GRAPHICS FOREVER!
It's probably something really simple. So please bear with the hardly computer literate dude here!
I decided to download it on my phone so that it doesn't happen again but I really don't want to restart the entire thing if I can avoid it.
Sorry to hear you lost your progress, but on the bright side you now get to experience the game anew ;)
You probably missed off a few characters or something, but it should just work with a simple copy and paste.
I strongly suggest you post it here while you're working on it to get both motivation and feedback to lessen the load.
Good luck!
Ill start a new discussion called The Legend of Gwyndolar.