It has been a while since I've made a thread or even a post on this forum. Anyway, time for me to bring about a discussion on a controversial genre: hack n slash. I don't want to call it a genre since it's more of a battle concept that can be applied to RPGs, Adventure, action, or RTS games (I'm likely missing some more), but I'll use it for simplicity reasons. I'm going to be designing a hack n slash single player game soon that will be combining that and the adventureness of a Zelda game. It will be top down view with cartoonish graphics, though will tell a story, unlike the typical hack n slash. The point I am trying to make is, I want to provide that mouse-click interface, but at the same time, I want it to be different. I figured adding magical spells, intelligent creatures, and loads of puzzles will help keep the challenges varied. In addition, at the beginning of the game, you can choose a "class" for the character, which decides his main weapons and the skills he will learn through a skill system. My concern here is if I'm going the right path in making sure I don't make a boring hack n slash, in the interest that I won't be focusing the game entirely on combat. This is more of a small project that I'll be using Game Maker to create, but I can use some opinions.

Hm... combat focused games can be fun to play, even for hours at a time, as long as the combat remains interesting and not repetitive. Inclusion of stuff like having monsters resistant (or immune) to damage from one direction, but with a slower turning speed, monsters that have strange AIs (they shoot and run, they travel in groups and try to flank, they zig and zag while fighting), and monsters that have special abilities (they can channel a slow effect, they raise lesser monsters to attack you, they have a range attack, or a splash attack, or have an attack that goes through shields).

Every monster should, however, have at least two different ways to defeat it, and the player shouldn't feel forced to use specific content. Mix up encounters, with multiple types of different monsters onscreen.


Lastly: don't make the game longer for the sake of extra time. Nothing is worse than a hack and slash game with the same encounter and puzzles over and over again.

I think it can be a very fun kind of game to play, provided that there's mystery surrounding what comes next. Diablo and Sacred were great in this respect, in that you didn't know what kinds of arms and armor you'd run across or what enemies would be succumb to.

I think if your concern is variety look hard at the actual gameplay. I loved the Necromancer in Diablo II for the sheer fact that I'd never gotten to play any character like it and really got a kick out of getting others to take the damage for me. It turned what might have been a boring hack & slash game into one with interesting resource management.

Finally, I know there's a 99.9999% chance that this will fall on deaf ears, but-- want to really be different? Then for the love of all that is holy pick a setting other than fantasy. Mix six-shooters and magic, set it in the twenties with tommy guns and voodoo or make it futuristic without vibroblades and psionics. Or if you're married to the idea of fantasy, get the heck out of freakin' Europe, go east or south or west or make up your own medieval setting with organic, living weapons and armor that forms from stone or sand. Anything but the same blasted "fireball spell", "goblin archer" and "rusty short sword +1" crap that clogs this genre. Nothing kills mystery faster than encountering the same tropes over and over with no variation.

Speaking as someone who's played a few of these types of games myself, nothing disappoints me more than getting a few hours into the game and realizing that I'll be doing the same thing I've been doing for the rest of the game. I played Titan Quest, and realized pretty quickly that the designers wanted me to push on with the promise of better weapons and cooler abilities. That's not a single-player experience to me, it's an MMO.

Do your best to keep players on their toes, include interesting classes or an interesting setting. I like your idea of including puzzles, that will definitely help. Entertain the notion of giving the player some character development, too, or make NPCs engage in real dialogue, not just monologue as a means to deliver the next fetch or assassination quest.

It's really easy to make a cookie-cutter hack&slash game that will bore your audience to tears. Even good examples, like Diablo II, have been around long enough that they're considered old-hat. There are lots of games on shelves right now that cost millions to produce and fell on their faces because players are not impressed anymore.

Wavinator's advice about novel setting will go a long way toward avoiding the "samey" feel that so many hack&slash games are plagued by. If your audience can look at a screenshot and say, "Bah, diablo clone" then that's what they'll expect, and no amount of gameplay variety will stop them from thinking it's just a Diablo clone with bells and whistles.

Without knowing more about it, I'd worry that it'd feel stitched together, with fun action sequences interrupted by boring puzzles, or fun puzzles separated by boring action sequences. If one part really shines, and the other parts are somewhat drab, then players will feel like they're being forced to play the lame parts to get to the good parts. Story can do a lot to alleviate this, and add purpose and direction to the bits that might otherwise be unremarkable, but story can also drag down good gameplay if you do it wrong.

I'd say you've got a lot on your plate, and if you screw up one facet, the gem is ruined.

You may want to consider making combat puzzles such as having to defeat certain enemies in a collection of enemies within a set time or having to kill them in a certain way such as using a particular skill or knocking them into an environment hazard. See Ratchet & Clank games, specifically their arena levels for some good examples.

@doomhascome: I totally understand what you're saying. It was already in my head to make sure the monsters weren't the same ole, same ole. As for the time issue, the game will be as long as the story allows, along with making sure that people don't run into the same thing like a lot of hack n slash or any game for that matter that I've researched on. For one, I even plan to have sort of a racing mini game in it as one of the chapters to move on in the story.

@Wavinator: I've realized that when people are actually forced to strategize use of their skills, they become more involved in the game as if they're the character themselves. This is easier accomplished with such classes, such as necromancers, but how would one do this in the form of a slashing class like a warrior? I would think that maybe they will have to use both their shields and swords in harmony to time attacks and get through tougher enemies.

You're lucky to have also caught me early in the planning stages. The game's setting isn't set yet, but I will admit, having sort of a fantasy-type of setting was the basis of it. Zelda is one of the inspirations. But as I was going through my thinking the other day, I was realized the pacing of a very good game called DJ Max. The music and gameplay worked great together, and was wondering if I should change the setting to neo-futuristic. When I say this, I mean the future setting where modern culture is in the form of bright lights and free choice of fashion. Think Jet Set Radio or its Future counterpart in terms of fashion, and S4 League in terms of the future setting. So I'm currently at the road where I'm looking back and forth between the two.

@AesteroidBlues: Since this will be a single player game, I don't have to worry much about trying to keep the players interested in being the best among a world of other players. I do want to provide character customization of some sort, so the player can build their character into their liking, and go through the game again if they want as something different in build. I want to break the cliches and actually try something different, while still using those old conventions as a solid foundation because it still works.

@Iron Chef Carnage: I know the challenge. To tell you the truth, because this is a small project at the moment, I don't have a lot of motivation to probably go to its end. I know what it takes to make and break the game, but I need to make sure that I'll have people interested first in it, which I plan to create a little technical demo later for people to try out and see if they like the idea. I work better when I know there are some fans waiting for the game.

@Edge Damodred: If it means keeping the pace of the game, I'm all for it.

I agree with Wavinator, avoid sameyness. Don't fall for the clichés of bog standard fantasy. Even if you do want to go with European fantasy, there is so much more there than Tolkien rip offs. Instead, have them battling Ettins to stave off Ragnarok. Or, to mix genres, have the Black Plague turning everyone into Zombies. :D Or if you want a more serious game, have witches as the main enemy and the players are fighting their familiars and those that they ahve enslaved by charms.

The possibilities are not just goblins and orcs, fireballs and spell slinging.

In a short course I did about fantasy writing, one thing they stressed is that magic, if included, should be made dangerous and not something that one can fling around like so much confetti.

One idea I have had on this for games is that when you summon a spell or creature, it is possible, if the player is inattentive, for it to get away form them and take on a life of its own. Spells could turn on the caster, monsters summoned can break free and see revenge for their enslavement, etc.

The mechanic I came up with (and you will likely make up your own) was to ahve spells drain manna from the caster just like it does in most games, but they also needed to use manna to dismiss the spell or monster. If they didn't have enough manna to do so, then the spell or monster would break free and become wild (monsters would attack the player characters, etc).

One other idea is Smart AI. This is not as difficult as you might think. You might remember something called a "Tamagotchi" (it was a big craze a few years ago). What these things did was to act in fairly predictable patterns, but these patterns interacted with what the owner was doing in a simple way.

But the thing that was important was that the designers worked it so that it seemed to be more intelligent than it was. This is the trick: Not to make it really intelligent, but to make it seem intelligent.

Some simple behaviours of enemies can lead to seemingly intelligent behaviours. I am currently working on (privately) a simple AI system that should be able to be implemented in almost any game. The aim of this AI system is to create a framework with which a developer can create complex seeming AIs with only a simple design.

The basics work around a set Finite State Machines that interact with each other and the player. The system is broken up into 3 major FSMs: The Scout, The Soldier and the Camp.

The Scout will seek to gather information about points of interest. These are X/Y(Z?) locations, either taken from both a predefined set of points or from a point generated by the AI system. As they are just a set of co-ordinates and not a specific game object it makes no difference to the system which it is.

First of all the scout travels between the Camp AIs and are not attached to them. However, if they are within a certain distance from a Camp AI, then that Camp AI can give the Scout a mission to do (head directly towards a Point of Interest). When given this mission, the scout will immediately head off towards the PoI but try not to be seen by anything.

Upon reaching the PoI it will take in a given set of information about it and then return to the nearest Camp (or the Camp that issued the order) without trying to be stealthy.

If at any point in this mission it sees any enemies, it will make a point of interest at that point and record the details of that PoI. It will then attempt to hid form the enemies until they are well out of sight and then return in a non stealth mode.

If it is seen by an enemy at any time, it will attempt to flee and then hide once safe. As being seen by an enemy also counts as seeing the enemy, it will create a PoI as per normally seeing an enemy.

If it is attacked, it will fight, but at the first opportunity (ie not in melee) it will attempt to flee. As being attack will also allow the Scout to see an enemy, this will trigger the creation and report of a PoI at this point.

From the last couple of paragraphs you might be able to see that this will cause the Scouts to locate any enemies (like the players) and then return this information to the Camp AI systems.

The Camp AIs will send out a group of Soldiers to match the expected resistance (and modified by the game designer to be appropriate - or not) to the group the scout encountered. If the response needed is beyond the Camp, it will attempt to recruit other nearby Camp to send Soldiers to the PoI by sending Runners (a version of the scout that treats the sending camp as the POI and the receiving camp as the camp to return to - this is an example of how the basic behaviours can be modified).

Soldiers are similar to Scouts (again an example of modification of a base design), but instead of trying to flee from enemies, they will engage in combat, but flee if they are getting beaten.

The Finite State Machine for the Scout has only 7 states (a very small number for the behaviours it can express), and it is the interaction with the player and the other AI systems (Soldiers have a similar number to scouts - and I am still working on them and the Camp AIs) that will allow this system to have quite interesting behaviours that will also allow the player to perform interesting strategies in dealing with them.

For instance, a player might draw the Soldier units away from the Camp by ambushing several Scouts. When this is done, they could then make a direct attack on the main Camp. Or, they might try a war of attrition on the Camp, drawing Soldiers out until the Camp can not defend against a main attack. Or they might just try to hid form the scouts and sneak their way into the Camp.

Normally in a Hack 'n' Slash these kinds of situations need to be heavily scripted and all contingencies catered for, but because this system is designed to be dynamic, very little scripting is necessary and it can handle most contingencies by itself. For really complex dungeon crawls, this might actually have less coding, than the scripting needed for a standard design.