Making more with less

Yokai Madness came to be after I finished the Godot 2D tutorial and realized that it was actually a fun game underneath. I looked up current jams, and the "Mini Jame Gam #49" had started earlier that day, so I signed up and went to work.

The two major problems were game design and art. I was constrained in a certain direction because of the game I already had, and I didn't have time to create any art myself.

The jam's theme was 'explode' and the special object that had to appear in the game was 'box'. As always, I had a brainstorming session where I came up with many different directions, but since it was my first time programming, the goal was simply to ship something, which meant the scope needed to be minimal. I had to work off of the (small) knowledge base I built from the tutorial, so as a cutting-the-Gordian-knot type solution I chose boxes that explode.

I started off with a game where the score rose with time as the player dodged enemies to stay alive, and I didn't want the exploding boxes to be just another loss-condition. So the boxes became the reward for better play: defusing a box by standing next to it earned you points, while letting it explode lost you points.

Looking back now, I'd probably leave out minus points, as I believe punishment never works but to frustrate. Theme and object implementation were definitely unsuccessful judging by their scores, but the gameplay and fun factor were acceptable.

For Yokai Madness I had no time to make art. Up till then, I had always made all the assets myself, and while it consumes a lot of time, one does have complete control over the outcome. The challenge with using assets is making them fit together into a cohesive whole.

I searched until I had enough similar material, so I ended up using a few different asset packs, slightly editing them in Aseprite to make them match. It turned out to be a samurai demon-hunter inspired game. I completed the set with a CRT shader from the Godot asset store to hide any slight inconsistencies between the assets. Based on that samurai vibe, I found a song that fit both the aesthetics and the gameplay.

The game ranked 9th for audio and 25th for visuals out of the hundred submissions, so I think it was a success.

Where does fun come from? Does it come purely from the gameplay experience or from being good at the game? For a high score chaser, obviously the latter. The basic psychological need for competence, i.e. feeling effective and mastering our environment, is that which drives us to try again and again.

It is the designer's job to make the fulfillment of this need possible and obvious by providing feedback, e.g. with a high score. However, if players only have their own score to judge against, eventually they'll reach a plateau. They might think they've reached the peak and stop playing.

I learned this on my own skin when playing Tiny Tarantula Tower, I even made a podcast about it.

A simple way to show players how far they could go is a leaderboard. Here's a comment from the submission page: "I really like this game haha. How is someone able to get 60 points?! It was very hard to get to the high score board at all :D"

Two things stand out. First, they saw that there are higher heights and second they tried hard to get onto the scoreboard. Both in combination led them to put in more effort = more time. A review that makes this explicit by another player: "Adding leaderboard was a great idea, it motivated me to play more."

When I completed the Godot tutorial that Yokai Madness grew out of, I noticed the teacher added a lot of pauses everywhere. For example, once you died, the game over screen was delayed by a couple of seconds, and after that a few more to see the start again button.

This can be a stylistic choice to create the effect of calm and reflection, but in a highscore chaser this was misplaced. The loop needed to be tighter, death to restart should be instant, and I made it so. Here's a review: "I think the game is pretty fun. It gets you to the action fast, you can do one run after another, it's pretty addicting."

I said to myself that I had to at least place 30th, and I hit that by a hair. Given the fact that I was learning a new skill, this game is a success in my book. Yokai Madness is not particularly impressive standing on its own so I think the result is very high for what it is. The design skills and tricks I picked up over the years definitely led to it overachieving.