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Interesting parallels to games today. > It is bad design to put puzzles and situations into a game that require a player to die in order to learn what not to d
by jncfhnb 2y ago
Interesting parallels to games today.
> It is bad design to put puzzles and situations into a game that require a player to die in order to learn what not to do next time.
I feel like this is not good advice anymore. Nowadays dying is more common in games and less intrusive. In some games it’s even canonical that the character is dying. It’s become less intrusive and thus more ok. Even for puzzles I think this is bad advice. Puzzles probably engage the player more when they’re solved right or solved wrong; vs when they’re either solved right or in limbo of not being solved yet. It encourages feedback on your solving path.
- jprete 2y agoThe modern version would be "don't severely penalize players for failures they can't prevent". I think in 1989 having to start over was considered less of a punishment, because games tended to clock in at low-single-digit hours with perfect play (assuming the game could even be finished).
- Auracle 2y agoNobody wants to replay the portion that they’ve figured out again and again to get to the part they haven’t. It took game developers a long time to figure that one out, for some reason. Heck, they still sometimes put a checkpoint too far back, but that probably comes down to testing. I’d say Super Meat Boy was probably a big turning point as far as that goes.