I’ve added some text damage indicators to show the player how much murder they’re dishing out. When they shoot a robot, a number pops up to show the resulting damage. On one hand, screen clutter is bad. On the other hand, if players don’t understand the mechanics it can lead to frustration and confusion. Oh sure, I could just TELL the player about how laser power, energy drain, and armor interact, but showing the player some math outside of gameplay is going to be a lot harder to understand than just showing them how hard they’re hitting.
I sent this version out to my testers last week. We’ll see what they say.
My guess? “Make it an option”. Everyone says to make things an option. It’s often good advice, but making EVERYTHING an option makes for complicated interfaces, complicated debugging, and gutless design. If possible, the game designer should really just figure out what kind of game they want to make. Telling the user, “There’s a good game in here someplace once you get all these sliders and checkboxes sorted out and adjusted” is probably not the most direct route to fun. Some things must be options, some things should be options, some things can be options, and some things just waste the user’s time and fill them with doubt. A simple checkbox at the start of the game for “permadeath mode” probably won’t overwhelm the user. But adding a dozen checkboxes and sliders? That’s fine for strategy games, but it’s probably bad form in a simple action game.
But like I said: We’ll see what testers say.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Project Good Robot 27: Missiles!”
Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.
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