TV Shows I Grew Up On: Legends of the Hidden Temple

When I was writing last week's Blank I Grew Up On, it made me think of another wonderful game show found on Nickelodeon (I might end up having a Nickelodeon game show theme for the next couple weeks come to think of it...), Legends of the Hidden Temple.  Each episode would start with six pairs of kids competing to see which pair would get to find this week's treasure in the hidden temple.  Each episode had a theme filled with historical facts and questions about some different artifact.

The contest was split into three elimination challenges.  First, the six teams must cross a moat with whatever method they are told to use (swing across using ropes, use a raft, swim, etc.  The first four teams to completely cross first and hit the button on the other side continue to the next round: The Steps of Knowledge.  The remaining four teams answer trivia questions to step down from the steps of knowledge.  Each right answer moves the team down another step.  The first two teams to the bottom of the stairs move on to the final round of team elimination.  The last two teams compete in different physical challenges that fit that episode's theme to earn parts of pendants of life.  After three of these competitions, the team with more pendant parts get to run through the hidden temple and try to find the artifact and bring it back out for the grand prize.

The temple itself is a large maze of various rooms that each have some trick or method to access adjacent rooms.  Contestants are told which room the artifact is in and must find their way into that room and get back out of the temple within a time limit to win.  However, there are three temple guards hidden within the temple that are out to catch them.  Generally, the guards were hidden along the prescribed path to get to the artifact in places the contestants were likely to trigger.  That is, if a player had to find a button in a sarcophagus to open the door and the room had multiple sarcophagi, then a guard would probably be in one of the others.  If the contestants had a full pendant of life, they could give it to the guard to keep going through the temple.  At most, a team could have 1.5 pendants of life from the last round of team elimination and another half was in the temple somewhere along the path they were meant to follow.  However, most teams only ever had one and so would be eliminated when the third guard was found (the first guard took the pendant, the second guard captured kid 1 of the team, and the third guard captured kid 2).

I always wondered if the kids had to travel along a certain path (the one the audience was shown/told about before the team entered the temple) or if they were free to try going other ways.  If they could only ever go along a certain path that it seemed designed to never let a team win ever.  I guess some teams did win, but I never witnessed these episodes.  This sort of goes along the lines of Nick Arcade where I understand that not every team can win, but at the same time it seemed unnecessarily harsh.  Of course, other times the kids were just idiots.

The Illusion of Danger

One of the lectures I went to for my first GDC was "Everything I Learned About Game Design, I Learned From Disneyland", by Scott Rogers.  It was filled with all sorts of wonderful ideas and lessons, but one of the ones that has really stuck with me was the illusion of danger.  A couple examples of this from Disneyland would be the "darts" in the Indiana Jones ride (before they lowered the air pressure) that actually felt like real darts or the splashes of water from the cannonballs in Pirates of the Caribbean.  Neither of these dangers are real and everyone knows this, but it still adds to the thrill of these rides.

This false sense of danger is even more important in video games to give a similar thrill to the players.  Uncharted seemingly does a great job of this because Nathan Drake is almost always seemingly just about to fall to his death or barely escape from a runaway train.  However, this sense of danger is only if the player keeps moving.  If you stand still on that pipe that will obviously break when you jump off of it, it will (usually) stay in place indefinitely until you move.  So the obvious solution to this would be to have the pipe actually break if you stay on it after say 5 seconds or so.  Another good example is if enemies in the background are shooting at you, they should all miss you unless you stand still for a little bit.  This will give the illusion that you have to skillfully dodge the enemy fire, but without having players frustrated trying to focus on both the foreground action and background action at the same time.

This sense of tension and imminent danger can sort of be mimicked in board games by having the game balanced such that the line between winning and losing is very fine.  If it's a cooperative game, then the ideal ending would be the players barely making it through the harrowing adventure or possibly losing someone on the way (bonus points if you can mimic the stereotypical blaze of glory or grand sacrifice seen in action movies).  If it's competitive, then making all players a threat to the current winner will keep that feeling of danger going.  This is definitely the aspect of the illusion of danger I'd like to work on some more in my future games.

Paper Prototyping For Work vs. Board Game Design For Fun

• Paper Prototyping For Work
• Pros
• Getting paid for doing what I love
• Having people immediately available to ask for help/advice
• Cabinet filled with game prototype materials (legal pads/pens/paper clips/etc)
• Nearby cafe for lunch breaks
• Cons
• Less control over project direction
• Frequent misunderstandings between current progress and full game design
• Working with a bunch of people (myself included at times) who want to jump ahead to programming the game before it's fully designed
• Meetings
• Board Game Design For Fun
• Pros
• Can watch TV while working
• Can bring my dog to work
• Full kitchen to cook my own food for lunch breaks
• Can work in my pajamas
• No deadlines or crunch time
• Cons
• Must pay for prototype components/scavenge other board games
• Have a dog to interrupt working
• A little too easy to become a full fledged hermit

TV Shows I Grew Up On: Nick Arcade

It's probably no surprise that being such a gaming aficionado, that I grew up watching a variety of game shows.  One of those shows was Nick Arcade.  This show had three parts: a video game related trivia game, arcade challenges, and a  "real life" video game kids would run through.

The trivia aspect was nothing new or phenomenal.  If you've seen one trivia game, you've seen them all.  The arcade challenges tasked players to play through a stage or section of a stage in recent Super Nintendo/Genesis games trying to score a certain number of points.  Since every game had a different point system (or no point system), the goal required would be adjusted to fit the game - although I always felt some goals were ridiculously hard to obtain and others were super easy, so it seemed kind of arbitrary.  The team who got the most points in the first two parts of the game would try to defeat the boss of that episode by entering a VR simulator.  Note: I have no idea how this actually worked, so this is only speculation.  I believe the simulator was some sort of green screen that would show the kids running through a video game trying to collect three items around the level and then hit the boss, but all sorts of obstacles and traps were scattered around the level.

Based on how the kids performed, I always suspected it wasn't clear to them where the traps were or how it would hit them.  Either that or they just picked really dumb kids.  I understand that like arcades, game shows are designed to only let a few people win - they'd lose a bunch of money if they gave away the grand prize every episode.  However, it was always frustrating watching it at home and seeing the kids just stand on top of a spike trap and not realize they're getting hit until they get killed.  Since it was also a team, it  was especially disappointing to see when one team member knew what they were doing, but lost because their teammate didn't know what they were doing.  It was still a very entertaining show for the most part and apparently it was quite the technical marvel in its day.

PlaneQuest Kickstarter

My dream future involves a wonderful combination of tabletop gaming and video gaming.  The closest I have seen to the future I envision is this Settlers of Catan on the Microsoft Surface.  One problem with that is that a Microsoft Surface is super expensive and difficult to get into my house.  The next closest thing I've seen is what the company TabletTop is trying to start with their Kickstarter for PlaneQuest.  Quick synopsis, they are developing a game for the iPad and other touch tablets that uses special figurines to control the virtual avatars.  I'll be perfectly honest, it's not the specific game they're creating that I'm supporting, but more the idea behind it.  Unfortunately, I get the feeling other people aren't willing to be so forward thinking with their money because this project doesn't seem to be going so well.

It was at £2,900 or so when I backed it over 10 days ago and it needs £150,000 total...this may be the first project I've backed that fails, but if it pops up again, I'd gladly help again to strive for this future.  Just imagine a world where you don't have to do any of the tedious board setup or having the game be able to compute things for you to make games go faster, but still getting cards and tokens and figurines that make board games so fun to play in the first place.  I guess for now I'll have to keep dreaming.  Either that or buy myself a Microsoft Surface...

Review: The DeathSpank Series

There are three different games in the DeathSpank series, but there are so identical to each other that there's not much point in reviewing them separately.  That sounds like a bad thing, but really, the games are so funny, the settings so bizarre and clever, and the gameplay is good enough that there's nothing wrong with that.  The series is created by game designer, Ron Gibert - famous co-creator of the Monkey Island series and also eventually The Cave.  Ron definitely has a certain style because the humor is consistently good in all of these games.

The games revolve around DeathSpank, a hero to the downtrodden, adorned with the Thong of Justice, his only objective is to vanquish evil.  Although, he tends to easily get swayed about who is evil and who isn't.  For example, he'll gladly help sentient Mind Barnacles (think Brain Slugs from Futurama) take over the local tribe population because they seem nice.  What could go wrong there?  Basically, the game is constantly poking fun at the typical adventure game trope that anyone who gives a hero a quest must be good.  In fact, that's what the game does mostly, use, take advantage, and make fun of all sorts of typical adventure game tropes.

Gameplay is simple enough, you can equip a weapon to each of the four face buttons, consumable items to the four directions of the control pad, select one of three aspects to improve upon leveling up, and talk to people to start or resolve quests.  You'll generally find equipment that matches your level as you go, so there's a constant feeling of progression.  Dying will merely teleport you to the nearest Outhouse (which also function as fast travel points).  Some quests involve some somewhat basic puzzles (a few riddles here and there, a few puzzles requiring finding, combining, and using items correctly).  The game also allows a second player to join DeathSpank as his companion (different companion depending on which game), but I didn't get to see how this affects the game.

If you like light-hearted, simple action RPGs with loads of dark humor, stupid chickens, orphans, and bacon, then this series is probably for you.  They are very well polished and there are definitely some very interesting twists and turns to more than just the story, but I don't want to say anymore lest I ruin things.  I would suggest at the very least to try the demo and if you find the gameplay enjoyable, go through the first for a mere $15.  You might find yourself hooked after that.

Books I Grew Up On: Disney Adventures

I guess every kid has at least one magazine they grow up with.  Or at least they used to, not sure what the equivalent for kids nowadays would be...anyway, the magazine that I subscribed to was Disney Adventures.  The magazine was filled with tidbits about the current movies, music, and television that was popular (obviously heavily focused on ABC, Disney, Touchstone Videos, etc.), random educational tidbits about whatever the current issue's theme was, and it had a bunch of comics from all sorts of Disney cartoon worlds.

One random thing I remember from my issues: the magician themed issue taught me that statistically, it takes 7 perfect shuffles to completely shuffle a deck of 52 cards.  I think this magazine also cultivated my love for everything Disney and helped solidify Walt Disney as one of my top role models.  I don't know about the later issues, but when I got it, it never felt like it was just a big advertisement for anything, but actually seemed like useful and worthwhile information.  I'm not sure how exactly to explain what I mean.  It felt Disney focused, but not blatantly biased "Disney is good, all else is bad".  I have the same feeling towards Nintendo Power and the opposite feel to Gamestop's magazine, Game Informer.  Of course, I'm probably the one that's super biased since I grew up with Nintendo systems and watching Disney movies...