Well something to consider. Is the rate in which you allow the player to learn the abilities needed to meet the winning condition. You can always keep one last trick up your sleeve until the very end. Or after having the player have to use the skill set over and over again, having them have a time limit that will push even what an average player would be able to do at that point in time. A climax is something that not only has to do with scale but also with dramatic effect.

Watch a lot of action movies with huge climaxes. There are many ways to tease a player into continuing further and further. Just don't make the patterns so easy that the player get board. Keep the patterns of how there skills are applied different and modulating slightly. Not so much that the player gets annoyed but enough so the player has to critically think about what they are doing. Zelda games are well known for being good at this. So maybe taking that knowledge you can apply it to other types of games.

So having a fixed time limit would be fine if the player cannot tell whether he had already won or lost from timer. Compared to the previous examples, Windjammers has a small stage, which makes the goal very close. I also think that shorter games climax easier.

In terms of RPGs, sometimes I don't get excited when I get a quest. I am thinking of the bad quests. When you get a exciting quest, how long can you remain in the excitement usually? What elements refreshs the excitment of the quest while you are at it?

- a short quest or a quest broken into short pieces
- a quest that alters the mode of gameplay
- a quest that seems simple (and not tedious) at first glance

What do you think about quests that are not initiated by the player? Usually, you initiates the quest by talking to NPC and eventually pressing the "accept" button. This is my example:

You are in town and you see a merchant loading a caravan. Then a thief comes and steals an item right in front of you and the merchant. The merchant calls for help while the thief is running away. There is no 'accept' option. If you want the 'quest', you start chasing the thief, otherwise, the thief would be out of sight and the opportunity to do the quest is gone (until the thief targets another merchant).

This quest has these properties:
- it is not initiated by the player
- the player does not know when the event may come

Quote:

Original post by Wai Your example is almost identical to what I have below. The main difference is that I did not make a time limit, although the main enemy serves a similar function. Mission: Flash | .exe

Finally got a chance to play this. How do you jump without dropping the honey pot? I would have preferred to be able to see a life meter for Brandy too. Also, the drama is greater if you can see the goal before the mission starts, but not know what all problems are between you and it. So maybe show Sunari for a minute, and if possible a compelling reason why she needs the honey, before starting the mission.


About making quests exciting - I think quests are exciting if new twists emerge as you go along. So that you have some ideas for strategies going in, but have to adapt as it goes along. Although, this only really works for a kind of quest that you can restart without penalty. For example, the Grow games could be regarded as really complicated quests. Although preferably one would replace the problem of doing things in the right order with choosing between options in any order, and maybe multiple solutions. Like, say your character has the abilities PickUp, Drop, and Use. He possesses a sword and 1 charge of a waterball spell. There is a gateway he needs to get through (the quest) but it is guarded by a monster. Also in the room are a patch of ground, a dead plant, and a rough rock, of which the latter two can be picked up.

So, the player can try using the sword or the waterball spell on the monster which will start a fight. Also picking up the rock and using it on the monster would do the same thing. Using the sword on the rock sharpens the sword, although this doesn't accomplish anything if it's already sharp. Using the sword on the dead plant converts the dead plant into seeds. Using the sword on the ground digs up the ground but dulls the sword. So to avoid fighting the monster, the player could get the seeds, dig up the ground, plant the seeds, water them with the waterball spell, pick the fruit that grows, sharpen the sword and maybe pick up the rock for later, bribe the monster to get out of the way with the fruit (or heal after combat by eating the fruit) and finally go through the gate. While not having a time limit, the drama of this scenario should keep increasing as the player gathers clues, takes risks, discovers emergent twists, and finally succeeds. The risk with this sort of scenario, though, is that you didn't do it as well as possible. You might not know whether it's better to kill the monster or bribe it, you might not notice if you can grow more than one fruit, you might not know whether using up your waterball charge is worth exchanging for the fruit, etc.

[Edited by - sunandshadow on January 14, 2007 1:09:17 AM]

You can jump and get back the honey pot in mid-air if you are not running at full speed. I tried to make it always fall if you jump at full speed.

Brandy does not have a life meter because she is invulnerable in raccoon form and indestructable in human form.

I would keep the ideas about presenting the drama in mind. Sunari doesn't need the honey. I was experimenting with quest states and handling items. I agree with what you said. When I played it the first time after coding it, I realized that the player doesn't know that there are two 'towns' nor the characters.

I think I will keep this quest, but change its context. I grew to like the bee carrying the honey, and there is something intrinsically evil about taking the honey from a bee, since the bees made the honey. The quest would make sense if the game is presenting a corrupted society where the characters strongly believe that honey belongs to humans.

Sunari: "If we don't get the honey from the bees, they will be overfed, they will grow into humongous monsters and eat us!"
Brandy: "But bees don't eat people..."
Way: "But they will! Sunari is always right!"

It is a very compelling reason. The bees are already huge.

I find this line satirical:

"The bee stole our honey!"

I haven't decided whether the stories in the game should be satirical. I think being satirical has quite an edge in a game where things don't appear evil. Alternatively, I can make the main characters helping the honey bee to get back its honey from the red bees, who collect their honey from other bees instead of flowers.

I guess it is a good thing if a quest has multiple appearance. Some may find it fun, some may find it fun because it is satirical. If I don't spell out everything, people can't tell whether the logics in the game is twisted because the game world is whacky, or because the stories are parodic. If you get the queen bee involved, you can make the whole storyline.


I don't know how to tell the player the goal when the mission starts. If this mission was done in the future, the player would have known that Sunari is in the second town. But since I don't have the background sprites, the word 'town' doesn't make much sense.