The Mechanic Killing Games Before They Start | Design Delve
Added 2024-08-09 15:02:41 +0000 UTCThis week's episode of Design Delve is now available!
Comments
Honestly, how death was handled was what made me drop Demon Souls when it came out. I was already doing terribly what do you mean you lowered my max health? I do feel like the Souls series has gotten better at the risk/reward balance over the years though….well outside of every boss having multiple stages, which gets worse with every entry
AzaChattan
2024-08-12 22:57:55 +0000 UTCThis is an older game example, but Star Control II had a very interesting way to handle challenge and death. Your life points were your crew, and the only way to get crew members back was either through some alliances or buying more crew members at your home base. If a secondary ship ran out of crew and blew up, and you ran out of those, you had to take your main ship into battle and that would lead into a game over. But not only that; if you went through crew too fast the cost of new crew went up. So there were levels of consequence in managing how much risk you were willing to take at any point in the game even without actually killing off the player completely.
Tammy Spiller
2024-08-09 18:39:53 +0000 UTCEverspace has an interesting take on death and consequence. The idea is that you have to die repeatedly to advance through the game, it’s the only way you can upgrade your ship/s to finally get to your destination, the only matter is how much money you accumulate on each run. It is very apparent from the beginning that you are a clone, so death is not the end, just an excellent plot device used to make the story more interesting.
Horus
2024-08-09 18:20:19 +0000 UTCI've given up on (& not started) some games once I found out how much I'd have to replay after dying. I agree with the need for consequences, but I don't have the time to replay 30 minutes or more every time I die. I really like how X-Com 1 & 2 handle death. An individual soldier being gone for good is a nice level of consequence. X-Com 1 also having individual countries drop out of the X-Com project if panic gets too high was also a great amount of consequences (yes, it can become a negative feedback loop as more countries start dropping out, but it takes a few countries dropping before that loop really starts)
Bj Last
2024-08-09 17:59:41 +0000 UTCThis is about 'Death of your character' but still adjacent to it. This just happened to me with playing Battletech where there was no autosave or checkpoints during a mission, I got to the last part of the mission and at the last part of the mission, I hit a fail state and failed the mission and had to restart the whole mission. I just stopped playing. I might go back but it definitely hit my desire to keep playing.
Envihon
2024-08-09 17:59:25 +0000 UTCI agree. Providing examples from other games could help make your point, or at least could help spread the due credit around a bit. Besides, the intended effect that Dark Souls facilitates is quite specific, so examples of intentionally achieving other effects might be educational.
Maciej Myczkowski
2024-08-09 17:04:06 +0000 UTCI don't disagree with any point made, it's actually pretty astute - but it's kinda turning into "Here's what games do badly that Dark Souls does well" or "Here's what games do well that Dark Souls does best."
Mike S
2024-08-09 16:51:18 +0000 UTCI have an interesting relationship with death in video games. Somewhere along the way, I started getting waaaaay too hardcore about self-imposed permadeath challenges and ironman modes in strategy games that often benefit from a bit of save scumming just because "go to the Church of Gaben and pray to RNGsus" is part and parcel of, say, a Paradox grand strategy game. On the one hand, it's made me a much more attentive and deliberate gamer, which has helped my developing love of survival sandboxes (Medieval Dynasty was my 2021 Game of the Year, and when I lost a run to a tree falling on my character's head like a Tex Avery cartoon, I wasn't even mad about starting over!) On the other hand, I've had plenty of moments like JM8 has had with games that are overly punishing with their death mechanics.
May Contain Fox-Like Substance
2024-08-09 16:47:45 +0000 UTCCareful, you'll give the impression that "Dark Souls is the pinnacle of game design and everything should work like it" and not "Dark Souls is one example of systems interacting harmoniously through a delicate balance to produce a specific effect on players".
Max Goldstein
2024-08-09 16:03:55 +0000 UTCI started resident evil 1 remake, died, realised I hadn't saved for a while and quit on the spot. Never went back. I get people love that game, but it's not for me.
elnombre91
2024-08-09 15:56:59 +0000 UTC
