The Serious Art of Designing Fun

I'm taking a short break from my normal design posts to talk about Prince of Persia: Rival Swords (PoP:RS). You can blame this detour on the cold I picked up last Wednesday. The only thing I could focus on during my short bouts of wakefulness was a game. In order to hasten my recovery, I've decided to write a lighter blog entry focused on the brilliant game design that is the Prince of Persia (PoP).

So why am I so impressed? Because it's one of those games that has successfully made the transition from 2D to 3D while preserving the original game mechanics (gaming history is littered with transitions failures - most notably Worms, Pitfall, and Sonic the Hedgehog). Not only has PoP:RS preserved the design elements from the original game, they successfully added additional mechanics that make effective use of the third dimension.

Follow up:

In the original Prince of Persia, the primary adversary was the environment. The player was forced to take (literal) leaps of faith, overcome falling platforms, navigate past traps and solve tricky environment manipulation puzzles that involve one or more levers. Sure, there were elements of combat, but combat was simplistic. My belief is that combat was introduced to diversify the game playing experience so that players do not quickly tire of the same experience. It also rounded out the game's topic - the fantasy of playing the protagonist in an Arabian Nights tale. To this end, the design has succeeded exceedingly well.

Before I focus on the good parts of the latest PoP sequel, I'm going to talk about its failing - combat. Combat is unengaging. You flail your arms while holding the wiimote and nunchuck and stuff happens. Swing the controllers enough and eventually you'll successfully hack your way through the opposition (I'm playing the game at the 'Normal' difficulty). It seemed as if the developers were far more focused on capturing the acrobatic powers of the Prince rather than focusing on a deeper tactical combat game. Don't get me wrong - you can play tactically if you so desire, but what's the point when flailing your arms wildly will eventually get you the same if not better result? The problem lies in the one versus many combat situation. Blocking is rather ineffective when you're surrounded and evasions have a 50-50 chance of succeeding for the most part. The only effective strategy I've discovered so far is to go on the offense... all the time... ergo the limb flailing technique. That's pretty much all I have to say about combat... for now.

Now let's talk about the good parts of the design - most notably its platforming mechanics. The original environment elements are there including:

• horizontal ledges (collapsible or otherwise) for standing or hanging
• traps (saw blade, rollers with blades, etc.)
• moving platforms
• levers
• floor activation plates (a switch that is activated by the player moving through it)

Then, they added some new environment mechanics including:

• climbing elements (poles, ladders, pillars, etc.)
• vertical slides (hanging banners that the player can shred with their dagger for a "controlled" descent)
• wall activation plates (like a floor plate - only mounted on a wall)
• movable navigation blocks
• wall spring plates
• monkey bars (that a player can swing on and/or climb)
• swing anchor points - an environment element that the prince can attach a chain to in order to swing himself further along in one direction (torches, chandeliers, bars, etc.)

In the original PoP, players were limited to walking, running, clinging (to platform edges), vertical jumps, walking jumps and running jumps. PoP:RS takes away the original jump diversity and replaces it with a vertical jump and a reliable horizontal jump, and most notably - wall-to-wall jumping. Then, it adds on a plethora of new movement mechanics including wall running (the ability to run on the wall - in a vertical or a horizontal direction), climbing, object manipulation, swinging, wall stabbing, and chain whipping.

The important thing about PoP:RS is that they've chosen to sacrifice realism in the environment in favour of standardized visuals for the navigation elements in the environment. Not that it was much of a sacrifice - for the most part, the navigation elements fit well into the level's visual design so long as you can suspend the disbelief as to why someone would mount clearly recognizable wall spring plates on a wall, or a wall activation plate in the oddest of places.

The most critical element of the design is that they chose to constrain their use of 3D. What do I mean by this?

1. Crucial platform navigation elements are constrained to 90 degree angles on all 3 axis. This makes it easier to spot the navigation elements and to figure out the appropriate course of action.

2. The available roster of actions are clearly and consistently communicated. For example, a player standing on a ledge may:

   1. Shimmy left/right
   2. Hang from the ledge
   3. Jump up vertically
   4. Jump away from the wall in a perpendicular direction

This lets the user focus on solving the environment puzzle with the known set bag of navigation tricks instead of problem solving based on real world constraints. In essence, the game designer has created a simpler and more constrained reality so that users have a more enjoyable experience.

The last thing I'm going to talk about is about pacing. This is where the game development field has much to learn from the creative writing field. In creative writing, pacing is the way the main plot and subplots unfold - they way they're distributed throughout the writing and the speed at which each subplot unfolds. Pacing is also the deliberate control of the suspense level. If a writer maintains the same suspense level throughout the entire story, the story starts to feel tired and unexciting because the said level becomes the minimum suspense level. Classic examples of these from the film industry are Shoot 'em up, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, and Terminator 3. They're not bad films per se and watching them in small doses can be exciting. However, watch them in large enough doses and you're likely to fall asleep.

For game designers, the equivalent is the way the various gameplay experiences are distributed and the control of the suspense level. Firstly, make sure to distribute the various play experiences. It doesn't matter how fun a particular game mechanic/experience is, repeat an action long enough and pretty soon, it'll feel like a chore. Secondly, make sure that there are moments of low suspense so users can catch their breath. PoP:RS has good pacing. By this, I mean that the game designers deliberately distributed moments of intricate environment navigation, fast-paced combat, high-pressure time-critical situations (when the protagonist transforms into the dark prince), high-pressure races (chariot races, anyone) and cinematics to change up the suspense level and the playing experience.

All in all, I highly recommend that designers play any of the recent Prince of Persia sequels to better understand the design elements I'm referring to today.