EPTThat's the theme for the next prototype, and it revolves around a certain problem we have with games today. The act of traveling or moving is often boring, it's not the focus of the game and doesn't really help with anything in most games. For example take a game like GTA. You're told you can drive cars, shoot and blow stuff up etc. but moving between different missions can take a lot of time.
Different games and genres have tried to solve this in different way. It needs to be "solved" especially because we are used to map time onto space. The farther the player travels the more time we expect to pass. This could have to do with time too of course, and does in games with day/night cycles. However usually games doesn't change the time of day at all or does it relative to the distance traveled.
A few example solutions: Making movement the main gameplay element (Super Mario), base the score on movement (Left 4 Dead), Random encounters (Pókemon), Exploration (Skyrim). These solutions are often close to the core of the gameplay or game mechanics as movement is such a large part of games in general.
Personally I think movement in games can be very fun when the designers did think about it. I'm currently playing the War Z and even while moving you have to constantly scan the horizon with binoculars and be prepared for encountering other players. The random encounters in Pókemon might be annoying but they can be avoided using items and sometimes you seek them to catch new fighters for your party. What I don't really like is when it feels completely pushed onto the player as in the Final Fantasy games where encounters are mostly used to grind (Nope, I don't like grinding) or as in World of Warcraft where movement takes a lot of time and is used as a punishment upon death.
Ok so on to the experimental prototype. Basically we cut movement out of the game and replaced it with instantly changing locations to a few predetermined ones and the player has no power over it. The game is a "racing" game so when the race is over, the player is teleported to the awards ceremony. And when the boss wants coffee, you go get it for him. Actually the player avatar is a mechanic so you don't get to drive a car, and your coolest game mechanic is that you can headdesk.
If you want to try it get it here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?oon96o5o5l81fpa
And this is how you play it:
Use the gray/red flashing item to charge your tool. It will discharge every time you use it and between every lap. You use it to unscrew and screw back the car's wheels which will need to be done at every stop. When the car is not stopped you have to cheer for it instead, while reloading your tool at the same time. Sometimes the boss will come in and demand you make coffee for him and this can completely ruin your racer's position in the race.
Controls: Use the mouse to look around, The first mouse button is used to fix the wheels (pressing the button a lot), cheering (pressing the button a lot) and charging your tool (Time it as close to the red state when you hear the sound). When the boss asks you to get coffee simply look up and down as much/fast as you can to headdesk until you're teleported back.
So what did we learn doing this small prototype? I'm not sure about that myself but movement sure is more important than we might think. Cutting it out completely isn't optimal but it is hard to make it interesting unless it is part of the core game mechanics. Making Skyrim-like environments does cost a lot of money. For small studios and indie developers you probably have to make a game which doesn't have a lot of geographical locations or make another kind of game (puzzle for example). Although that is only if movement is not an interesting gameplay element.
Hmm... I wrote a lot and it might have come out a bit incoherent but that's fine, I won't write anything next week as we're currently working on a board game prototype for sandbox narrative. If you got this far, thank you for reading.
