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Old 04-15-2008, 01:49 PM   #1
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Default Designing a Game Without Death

This quote from Erwin piqued my interest, and I thought it would be pertinent to discuss it here:

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Originally Posted by Erwin_Br View Post
As an amateur adventure developer it surprised me how difficult it actually is to design a game in which you can not die.
So I ask, why is this so? Because I've always found it very easy; in fact, I don't think I've ever designed a game in which the protagonist can die, mainly because I don't really have that much personal experience in situations that tend to result in mortality, save for perhaps illness, accidents, and old age.

Thoughts, anyone?
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Old 04-15-2008, 02:30 PM   #2
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Well, it does depend on the type of game as well, I think. Imagine Police Quest without the risk of death.

Death is such an easy way out. When you avoid death, you'll have to think about things as how to make a believable villain (even in comedy games) that the player is afraid of, even though he won't kill you. Monkey Island pulled this off great, I think. You'll have to think about alternative consequences when the player interacts with 'dangerous' items the wrong way. Or making the wrong decisions in situations.

I remember playing a certain scene in Ace Ventura (don't ask...) where you have to pass a series of pipes that are bursting fire in a certain pattern. It would be easy to let the player die after making a mistake but instead, you're presented with a cutscene of Ace running out with his ass on fire, cooling it in the snow outside. After that, you can try again. -- This solution requires some thought, creativity, and ultimately even the production of extra assets.

With this example I'm trying to say that it's not impossible to avoid death, but it can be quite difficult because you have to come up with alternative solutions, while keeping in mind how these are going to affect your time (creating extra assets, more programming, etc...) I found that to be quite a challenge in a game that's probably already too complex as a debut project

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Old 04-15-2008, 03:23 PM   #3
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Haha, I played the Ace Ventura game too, back in the day. That said, couldn't it be argued that to make a really good death scene, you'd also need to generate the same amount of art assets?

Furthermore, isn't it the case in most adventure games (I'm mostly thinking Lucas here) that you can't make a wrong choice; in other words, you find yourself pretty much stuck unless and until you can make the right choice? In this way, it's very easy to prevent deaths, and I actually tend to prefer this kind of gameplay to "do the right thing or die" types of stuff. (Of course, I tried to formulate an alternative of sorts in Chivalry is Not Dead...)
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Old 04-15-2008, 06:54 PM   #4
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I remember playing an adventure game that did not kill your character off when you take too long during a timed sequence. Has anyone ever heard of "Around the World in 80 Days" for the Mac?

There was pretty much no way of dying in the game at all. Taking too long always causes a humorous coincidence to happen. It's been a long time since I've played it, but I kind of remember when...

Spoiler:
... when the main character is riding a boat down a river when the villain blocks his way with his own boat. If the player doesn't do anything for about a minute or so, a flock of birds will attack the villain and clear the way.


So I think silly coincidences can help keep the game entertaining if timed sequences are necessary. On the other hand, they might allow players to skip certain puzzles (80 Days didn't seem to have any puzzles).

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Old 04-24-2008, 11:44 PM   #5
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One of the things I liked best about the Indie game "Other Worlds" was the use of a resurrection spell. I managed to kill myself early in the game by improperly mixing nitro and was somewhat annoyed, since I hadn't saved. There are other points in the game where you can die, but by then you have acquired a wand and a resurrection spell and can revive yourself. It was such a "yippee" moment for me to see the Grim reaper coming and realize that he was interactive. Although spell casting wouldn't be suitable for every game world, the presence of nearly fatal death was a great device to give the impression of consequences without slowing game play, or penalizing the player for saving infrequently.
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Old 04-25-2008, 09:20 AM   #6
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I'm not a fan of punitive gameplay. That explains it.
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Old 04-27-2008, 04:30 PM   #7
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Well, if you think about it in the abstract, what is "death" in an adventure game? It's just a consequence for a wrong choice. Do something wrong and you cannot proceed. That actually doesn't even have to involve your character dying. If you have a scenario where a player can get locked in a room and there's no way out without the key that they chose not to pick up when they had the chance, then they're just as "dead" as if they chose to jump out of the plane without strapping on the parachute first. It's an event that ends the game. Sometimes these scenarios can be avoided (ie, have the character say "I should find a key or something to prop open the door with first" or "Jump out of a plane without a parachute? Are you crazy?") but automatically that kinda lessens the gameplay because it force feeds them hints at what they should do. A player should be able to make the wrong decision, but the consequence shouldn't be something that gives a GAME OVER screen.
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Old 04-30-2008, 02:49 AM   #8
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What a coincidence: an article about how different game designers cope with death. Dave Grossman is one of the interviewed designers.

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager....=0&cId=3167594

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Old 04-30-2008, 02:32 PM   #9
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Thanks for that, Erwin.
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Old 05-07-2008, 07:28 PM   #10
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Death in an adventure game is tricky. It's something that usually carries more weight than something as trivial as dying in a shooter, but it can also break immersion. In particular, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers had an engrossing atmosphere that felt dangerous and exciting but until I got to Day 9, I didn't know that you could die in the game. Then in Day 10, there is such a ludicrous barrage of deaths that will happen to (I'm assuming) almost everyone that it becomes a die, click reload, try again, fail, repeat process that significantly impacted my impressions of the final gameplay portions. Until that point the game felt like a true, interactive movie, and once the death screens started popping up, the fourth wall was broken. The game remains one of my favorite to date, but that is the one area where I thought it could have been improved.

I guess my point is that I don't have a problem with death in an adventure game when it is a possibility, but when it's an inevitability (such as having a deadly series of unclear, timed puzzles back-to-back), it doesn't help with the immersion factor.
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Old 05-20-2008, 08:31 AM   #11
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I think I can sympathize with the wish not to have punitive death sequences in a game. However, it seems to me that the needs of dramatic tension sometimes require that you place the audience in danger's path, and the only credible way for them to experience the tension is to have a brush with death. How to make that happen without breaking immersion probably requires that you script out ways that death can be avoided in any situation where death is imminent, and try to give the player ample hints without breaking the fourth wall.

If all else fails, a death sequence could be handled in such a way that either the player receives the answer to the question of 'what should I have done', perhaps spying the answer as they lay dead on the floor, and/or have them suddenly jump back to a point before they entered the danger zone, where they shake their head and realize they were lost in thought, and have them kind of do a 'well, that won't work. So how do I do this?' At this point, any possible solutions might pop up as hints, assuming they have prior knowledge of the appropriate objects/areas.

It's really down to situational awareness, which in these games requires that you give the player a little poke when they pass something important that they may need to exploit shortly. Not like highlighting an object they need to pick up (I'm not fond of inventory-heavy games. I like an inventory, but any game that requires you to pick up everything that isn't nailed down feels like bad design to me). Just a subtle heads up mechanic to let them know that they just spotted something out of the corner of their eye that might be important. Maybe a little glint of light off of an object, or a dramatic fall of light across a closet door where they might be able to hide, something like that.

I'm not saying that death sequences should always be handled in such a way. I think some games really do require that you handle imminent danger in more creative, comedic ways. I can think of a number of Sierra-type games I enjoyed that would have been so much better if the death sequence problem hadn't been so frustratingly unavoidable. I guess I'm just of the mind that, if heightened danger is called for, the answer is to make the player think it over and be aware of their surroundings, and actually provide them ways of avoiding death. I'm not a fan of death sequences, but I'm terribly fond of narrow escapes.

Of course, a fair bit of this requires art assets that might prove prohibitive, and programming that might not be possible, depending on the engine you use.

Just my 2¢. I'm going to make some soup and spend some more time with the MetFall plotline now.
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Old 05-20-2008, 10:18 AM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lee in Limbo View Post
However, it seems to me that the needs of dramatic tension sometimes require that you place the audience in danger's path, and the only credible way for them to experience the tension is to have a brush with death.
The thing about brushes with death is that a) not very many people experience them in real life, making them, for the most part, imaginary experiences, and b) they're so overdone in movies, etc. that their impact gets deadened (at least for me; I could be an anomaly here). At this point, I'm a lot more interested in creating tension out of situations I myself have experienced, whether directly or indirectly, for fear of writing something that comes off as too hacky.

Come to think about it, the idea of writing a game where the protagonist wants to commit suicide would be interesting. Could potentially be too emo, but in the right hands... hmm...

Quote:
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If all else fails, a death sequence could be handled in such a way that either the player receives the answer to the question of 'what should I have done', perhaps spying the answer as they lay dead on the floor...
Thing about this is that it's generally bad design if you structure the puzzle so that the player cannot know how to solve it unless they have already died at least once. (Unless there's a nifty science fiction explanation as to why they are able to resurrect themselves from the dead, of course...)
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Old 05-20-2008, 01:08 PM   #13
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I was really happy when I found out in Ben Crowshaw's latest release 6 Days A Sacrifice you couldnt die, unlike its predecessors, Im nervous in horror games but the reassurance that it wont be game over around the corner gives me more inspiration to play, his newest game still does however manage to input the same fear about game over sequences as the previous ones, but its not feasible, and the few puzzles within the game that do hold some "killing" power, are quite cleverly used as dream situations, so that if you do a part wrong
Spoiler:
For instance in the Defoe manor towards the end and all three Trilby's die
You arent killed, and dont have to rely on your save files, you just wake up again, and get a sense of Deja vu, simularly, in certain puzzles your reflexes are required still, in order to advance the game.
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Old 05-20-2008, 01:45 PM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Squinky View Post
Thing about this is that it's generally bad design if you structure the puzzle so that the player cannot know how to solve it unless they have already died at least once.
I completely agree with you here. I wasn't being precise enough. I would want to see a system put in place where the answers would make themselves apparent to the player as they come into proximity with them, but if the player fails to choose a solution before the death sequence occurs, a last glimpse, so to speak, would be offered, giving th player a stronger hint of what they could have done to avoid this eventuality

And yeah, in truth, most of the close calls I've ever had in my life were a little too mundane for an adventure story. Nearly being run over or drown are common enough occurrences, but don't always recommend themselves too well to an adventure plot, and certainly not in a way that makes for fulfilling replay (Look both ways next time. Wear the life jacket. Simple enough, and totally valid, but not very dramatic solutions).

Ultimately, I'm just doomed to be a hack pulp writer, because I don't really get enough fulfillment out of trying to devise stories out of my daily life. I usually just blog and forget. Terminal Monday was a sort of strange experiment, but it wasn't intended to be so biographical. And I haven't had the nerve to go back and finish it yet. I might do so yet, but I certainly wouldn't want to make a living writing such things.

I can't imagine getting enough creative juice out of anything more than borrowing lightly but liberally from past experiences for a dash of verisimilitude. Devising a whole game around a past experience just sounds like more work than I would want to devote to something that happened to me. My self-analytical jones seems to be satisfied with blogging for now.

And besides, I had a whole phase in my late teens and early twenties where most of my work was self-referential. These days, I'm kinda trying to avoid the pitfalls of having everything I write be about me. In the end, everything you write sort of is about you, but you can't make a living out of referencing yourself constantly. There already is one Woody Allen, and he's still working.
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Old 05-20-2008, 02:52 PM   #15
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The thing that drives me the most at the moment is the fact that there are far fewer games about real life than there are about fantastical situations. Truth is, I like both kinds of stories (and hey, the biggest games I've written have been pretty damn fantastical, or at least a healthy mashup of fantasy and reality), but I abhor the thought of retreading ground that's too familiar. Also, I love a challenge, and proving that real life can be just as interesting as adventure stories in games is one I'm willing to attempt.
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Old 05-21-2008, 01:48 AM   #16
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I've found myself adoring futuristic, scifi adventure games, like Legacy and MoS, because the designers get to put their own stamp on technologies change, its a shame that most futuristic games require some kind of doomsday, or corruption, but I suppose they have to have a large enemy, I just love seeing the ideas and losing myself in this newer version of earth.
Im sure in the future, if there is such a thing, maybe they'll take great joy in playing the ones circulated around our age and our reality, reality games for us wont be the same for them.
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