Stripping Away The Barriers #2

Posted by oddbob on July 13, 2006 · Lovingly Filed Under Personal 
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Kastle Kumquat

If you take any game created in the past 20 or 30 years and analyse it then you can reduce the game to its raw elements with ease. After all, any game is a number of simple idea’s that all interlink to form the final “game”.

Quoting from Hitm4n again, here - referring to Kastle Kumquat, a remake of an old Amiga shareware game by the same author as the excellent Keith Goes Painting:

Its a top down, run around jumping over lava and collecting fruits game. walking on switches, opening doors and progressing. Very much like alien breed without the aliens.

This game has enemies in but they have set paths and speeds. The player must learn these paths and find their route past them, or time it right and run like hell. There are instances in the game where the player must jump in between 2 enemies that move at the players walk speed and follow them round a path, then jump out at the end to get a key.

Ok, so there’s our concept - now lets strip it down.

You control a player that can move in 4 directions - up,down,left and right.

The player can jump to negotiate hazards.

The player must collect items in order to progress to the next stage.

The player must trigger switches in order to open doors.

The player must avoid enemies.

The player must negotiate a maze of sorts to get around the screen.

The player has a set amount of lives in order to do this.

Now, in combination and with a little bit of design trickery on the level structure - thats really all there is to Kastle Kumquat. You can break any game down in a similar manner with barely a few minutes of thought.

I’m sure it doesn’t take a genius to see where I’m heading with this either ;)

Now, as I stated earlier - the game will be constructed with a fully able bodied player in mind - therefor, in combination, all these elements are good things in a well designed game. However, in considering making our game more accessible - we have to forget for a moment everything that we take for granted in designing and constructing a game. Whats easy for you or I is not necessarily easy for someone else. Its not about the difference between Ikaruga and Space Invaders - its in part about what you can physically achieve with a level of comfort. And this is where all the rules go out of the window.

A-Maze-ing (veh droll)

What we’re considering here is a very literal reading of the term “skill level” where your normal game remains intact, but for an easier skill level we take a sideways approach and tear it all up.

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