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SHORT GAMES, YAY OR NAY?
Posts
UPRC
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UPRC
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CloseI love short games since it's easier to maintain quality throughout them. In a long game you'll have high quality parts that are really great, but you'll also have some pretty low spots which aren't at all good representations of the games they are in. In short games, it is easier to keep the quality high from start to end since the overall development time is certainly much shorter and there's less content to focus on.
I like short games that tell really interesting stories or at least keep you wondering what will happen next. Immersive short games are also really cool. One that comes to mind is Dinner Date, a game that I originally HATED but now I look back on it and thought that it was a pretty neat experience. I like short games that really put you into the mind of the character, and it helps when you see from their perspective and have access to the EXACT same knowledge of events that they have as well. Like in Dinner Date, the character is waiting for his date to arrive and the player is along for that ride. The character has no idea if the date will even show up and neither does the player. Every single telephone ring or knock on the door gets us excited ("She's here! She's finally here!").
However, a big strike against Dinner Date is that it's only like 10-15 minutes long and there's little to no reason to replay it again. Short games should be memorable (which Dinner Date is), but I also think that the shorter length of the game should be balanced with some kind of incentive to want to go back and play again. Maybe the player would just want to try a different approach to passing an obstacle/puzzle or they would want to choose different dialogue choices to see if saying different things affects the final outcome at all.
Little things like beefing up replayability makes short games a lot more fun because you don't have to play for hours upon hours just to make different choices or decisions, you can simply jump into the game and wait about ten or twenty minutes for the scene to come up again.
I think platformers are the best at doing this, especially Mario games. You have bonus worlds, warp zones, alternate level exits... And then there's games like Mario World with hidden levels, switch palaces, and so much more. There's so much room for experimenting and playing around in Mario games. I look at all of the different choices you can make during levels as forks in the road. Follow one fork and you'll wind up at another and possibly even another after that.
I'm getting off track, but short games should have an extra "oomph" to them so that they're not just quick little stories that you never want to visit again. Different choices and options should be presented to players throughout the experience to make them want to revisit the story at least once.
I like short games that tell really interesting stories or at least keep you wondering what will happen next. Immersive short games are also really cool. One that comes to mind is Dinner Date, a game that I originally HATED but now I look back on it and thought that it was a pretty neat experience. I like short games that really put you into the mind of the character, and it helps when you see from their perspective and have access to the EXACT same knowledge of events that they have as well. Like in Dinner Date, the character is waiting for his date to arrive and the player is along for that ride. The character has no idea if the date will even show up and neither does the player. Every single telephone ring or knock on the door gets us excited ("She's here! She's finally here!").
However, a big strike against Dinner Date is that it's only like 10-15 minutes long and there's little to no reason to replay it again. Short games should be memorable (which Dinner Date is), but I also think that the shorter length of the game should be balanced with some kind of incentive to want to go back and play again. Maybe the player would just want to try a different approach to passing an obstacle/puzzle or they would want to choose different dialogue choices to see if saying different things affects the final outcome at all.
Little things like beefing up replayability makes short games a lot more fun because you don't have to play for hours upon hours just to make different choices or decisions, you can simply jump into the game and wait about ten or twenty minutes for the scene to come up again.
I think platformers are the best at doing this, especially Mario games. You have bonus worlds, warp zones, alternate level exits... And then there's games like Mario World with hidden levels, switch palaces, and so much more. There's so much room for experimenting and playing around in Mario games. I look at all of the different choices you can make during levels as forks in the road. Follow one fork and you'll wind up at another and possibly even another after that.
I'm getting off track, but short games should have an extra "oomph" to them so that they're not just quick little stories that you never want to visit again. Different choices and options should be presented to players throughout the experience to make them want to revisit the story at least once.
Ever since I first assessed any of the basic facts of amateur RPG design--like that videogames are fucking HARD to make all by yourself, and that most projects a person start won't get finished or even close--I have endeavored to make every game I've made either short or limited in scope or both. I've also not allowed myself the luxury of perfectionism, instead focusing on getting things done: if the choice has been between remapping Area 2 to make it prettier or moving on to Area 3, I have always done the latter, trying to keep my momentum moving. But yes, short is what I aim for.
There are a few notable exceptions, but they fall into two basic kinds. Follies of youth, and cases where I've tried to trade length for disguise.
The original plan for Iron Gaia was going to be a much longer game that included the events of Iron Gaia 1 and Iron Gaia 2--Iron Gaia: Virus was conceived later. Anyway, that didn't happen, and Iron Gaia is still just the first half, roughly, of the game I wanted to make. But considering that the second half was literally, in structure, "collect four crystals" maybe that's not such a bad thing. Anyway, thinking that I could finish a game at least twice as long as Iron Gaia was a folly of youth.
I must have also been really naive if I thought I could flesh this out into a full length, epic game without going completely insane.
Journeyman is the only exception I can think of where I knowingly tried to make a full-size, full-length RPG with tons and tons and tons and tons of items and systems for combining those items into more items and weapons and armor and spells. In that case, though, I was propelled by two things. One, I already had every map I would need for the full game made for me by ShortStar before I started. This was huge for me. Two, although the game would be vast, it would be a simply definable vastness: one island kingdom, five towns, five dungeons. Ten total areas, that's it. Three, I thought that I could trade scope for scale, by removing many of the elaborate cutscenes and lengthy dialogue that make traditional RPGs so vast, and instead focusing on interacting systems and emergent gameplay.
So that's my first recent foray into making a longer game. I can't tell you yet how it will work out. (At times I have started other projects just for the joy of starting them, with no real idea how long they would wind up. I have really not been much of a planner, honestly, and all the planning I have done has been in my head, not on paper.)
There are a few notable exceptions, but they fall into two basic kinds. Follies of youth, and cases where I've tried to trade length for disguise.
The original plan for Iron Gaia was going to be a much longer game that included the events of Iron Gaia 1 and Iron Gaia 2--Iron Gaia: Virus was conceived later. Anyway, that didn't happen, and Iron Gaia is still just the first half, roughly, of the game I wanted to make. But considering that the second half was literally, in structure, "collect four crystals" maybe that's not such a bad thing. Anyway, thinking that I could finish a game at least twice as long as Iron Gaia was a folly of youth.
I must have also been really naive if I thought I could flesh this out into a full length, epic game without going completely insane.
Journeyman is the only exception I can think of where I knowingly tried to make a full-size, full-length RPG with tons and tons and tons and tons of items and systems for combining those items into more items and weapons and armor and spells. In that case, though, I was propelled by two things. One, I already had every map I would need for the full game made for me by ShortStar before I started. This was huge for me. Two, although the game would be vast, it would be a simply definable vastness: one island kingdom, five towns, five dungeons. Ten total areas, that's it. Three, I thought that I could trade scope for scale, by removing many of the elaborate cutscenes and lengthy dialogue that make traditional RPGs so vast, and instead focusing on interacting systems and emergent gameplay.
So that's my first recent foray into making a longer game. I can't tell you yet how it will work out. (At times I have started other projects just for the joy of starting them, with no real idea how long they would wind up. I have really not been much of a planner, honestly, and all the planning I have done has been in my head, not on paper.)
I always imagine the episodic thing is the way to go if you have dreams of a big project you don't want to put down.
That way, you can have each finished product relatively short and maintain a certain level of quality throughout. Or if you have concepts and design choices you want to implement, you can implement them in the next chapter, without having to create a new IP or let your already made resources go to waste.
I know there's quite a few memorable chapter one games out there. Even if chapter two never happens, you wind up finishing something, without giving up the dream of a huge project by limiting your scope before you start.
That way, you can have each finished product relatively short and maintain a certain level of quality throughout. Or if you have concepts and design choices you want to implement, you can implement them in the next chapter, without having to create a new IP or let your already made resources go to waste.
I know there's quite a few memorable chapter one games out there. Even if chapter two never happens, you wind up finishing something, without giving up the dream of a huge project by limiting your scope before you start.
Killer Wolf
1235
The one game I've released so far, or the non-demo version of it I play in testing, has about 5 hours of non-battle content, not counting the final cutscene. I've never actually timed out the entire game, except to notice that playing the whole thing apparently eats up most of a saturday, but I'm guessing there are probably at least 2 and a half hours or more of actual combat sprinkled throughout. Depending on the player, and if you take dying and re-loading into effect, it probably makes for about a 10 hour game, which is still incredibly short for an RPG.
One of my other projects has a target of around 4 to 6 hours, total, with an optional extra dungeon that can be unlocked after the plot for the particularly masochistic (No items, limited healing, party member perma-death).
I'm really getting to like the idea of releasing games episodically. At first, I hated the idea, because what happens if I buy episodes 1-8 of a game, but I'm the only one and the company goes under before rounding it out to an even ten and finishing the story?
As a fledgling game dev, episodic games feel like the ultimate use of the short game format, or maybe it just feels like that to me since I grew up in the Golden Age of Shareware. Once you locate/generate all your art and sound assets, you never have to start the project from scratch. Keeping the content blocked into easily digestible chunks allows the dev to reach goals and (hopefully) stay motivated. It would feel much better to complete three projects in a row than it would to realize you were only one tenth of the way through one game, wouldn't it?
One of my other projects has a target of around 4 to 6 hours, total, with an optional extra dungeon that can be unlocked after the plot for the particularly masochistic (No items, limited healing, party member perma-death).
I'm really getting to like the idea of releasing games episodically. At first, I hated the idea, because what happens if I buy episodes 1-8 of a game, but I'm the only one and the company goes under before rounding it out to an even ten and finishing the story?
As a fledgling game dev, episodic games feel like the ultimate use of the short game format, or maybe it just feels like that to me since I grew up in the Golden Age of Shareware. Once you locate/generate all your art and sound assets, you never have to start the project from scratch. Keeping the content blocked into easily digestible chunks allows the dev to reach goals and (hopefully) stay motivated. It would feel much better to complete three projects in a row than it would to realize you were only one tenth of the way through one game, wouldn't it?
